


Mirror's Edge

by Speedy1236



Series: Triple Threat Novels [4]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games), Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Chaos Emeralds, Friendship, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2020-03-02 05:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 114,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18804811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Speedy1236/pseuds/Speedy1236
Summary: Secret GUN material and the Master Emerald get stolen by - a blue hedgehog? Sonic thinks proving his innocence is trouble… until he gets caught in a cunning trap of an old foe. With Sonic lost and on his own, Tails suddenly turned a target and Knuckles over his head in between his duty and his friends, can the trio see through the scheme in time to save each other... and the world?





	1. Criminal's Morning Routine

A light and still cool breeze brushed through the leaves of the lonesome tree. The grass of the hills surrounding it was full with the sparkles of a mild night's dew and now began to twinkle like an ocean of diamonds in the orange light of the rising sun.

Sonic the Hedgehog yawned unabashedly and stretched his arms over his head, then he flopped back into a relaxed position on a thick branch, his right leg dangling freely and his quills flattened against the tree's stem.

Through the leaves around him, the blue hedgehog watched the sun crawl up behind the distant hills. In the small valleys between them, a slight fog gently levitated in ghostly wisps until the spreading warmth of the beginning day broke through the misty shapes and they fell apart, leaving only a soft haze behind. As the sun rose higher, it started to reach the haze and turned it to a glowing coat spread across the fields. In the distance, the carved-in-rock form of a Mobius loop was throwing a long shadow with a light hole.

Sonic sat up on the branch he'd spent the night on, swung his left leg over it and slid down to land on the ground. His sneakers left deep footprints in the damp grass as he slowly walked away from the tree. For a moment the hedgehog overlooked the green hills from where he stood and a small grin formed on his face.

This was going to be a great day for some running. Sonic felt his grin broaden at the self-amused notion that this wasn't saying much. Of course, in his eyes almost every day was a great day for running. Not only that it was his favorite thing to do, it also, in a way, served a deeper purpose, if he could call it that. Mornings like this one reminded him of how much there was to see in the world, how much there was to explore, and yet so little time to do it. Moments like this one were short, and he wouldn't want to risk missing on them.

And of course, running was also great training. After all, he had to be fit when the notorious Dr. Eggman turned up again and started another plan to take over the planet. Sonic chuckled lightly. He'd not seen Eggman for a while, but as far as the hedgehog was concerned that usually meant the crazed scientist was brewing one of his oh so awesome plans again. It was just a matter of time until he'd be back. If he was to be serious, Sonic wouldn't want it any other way. No matter how annoying Eggman was, he sure made his life more interesting…

Still standing atop the hill, Sonic wondered where to go first now. Leading a free life like his meant you could almost always go wherever you wanted. You could go _everywhere_ … and sometimes Sonic just couldn't decide which part of everywhere he wanted to see first.

His right hand felt over his stomach as it gave out a loud, hungry growl. There was a distinct hole in it. The hungry noise sounded again and the hedgehog laughed a little. Getting some breakfast first was a great idea, actually. Sonic's head briefly turned around as he orientated himself, then he picked a direction and fell into a jog, the wind in his wake tearing the haze asunder and shaking the dew off the grass blades.

Metropolis was something like two hundred miles to the north. A relaxed little morning run.

* * *

A light gurgling sounded from where the water of the small creek fell about half a meter into an almost round pond, only a meter deep and so crystal clear that the ground covered with hundreds of roundish pebbles appeared as if seen through glass. Just the tiny movements of the surface showed the water wasn't all as still as it looked.

When Knuckles' bare hands dived into it, dozens of circular waves ran over the pond's surface. Sitting on his knees next to it, the red echidna leaned down towards the water, gathering some up in his hands to splash on his face. A light shiver ran through the guardian's body at the cold of it, but he smiled a little as his hands dived back into the water. While almost too cold for a morning clean-up like most of Angel Island's creeks, it had just that exact temperature that made water the most refreshing to drink. Knuckles swallowed it slowly, savouring how it tasted of the fresh winds up in the mountains and the blue ice of the glaciers.

When he had quenched his thirst, the echidna reached for his gloves and pulled them back on. He yawned and stretched his arms to the side, attempting to chase the last remains of sleep out of his body, then he started his walk along a narrow path that led him along the creek for a minute before angling through the forest, past the giant mushrooms, up a gentle hill and out onto a large clearing.

Knuckles followed the treeline to the very top of the hill, stopping there just briefly to let his gaze trail over the grassy hills. They shone in bright green, untouched and peaceful. Knuckles was about to nod to himself and just enjoy the calm mood when he spotted a blue streak rushing over the hills at what was at the moment Knuckles' horizon, probably five hundred meters from his position.

"Is that Sonic?" The guardian had not seen the hedgehog in a while, and usually it was easy to tell when he was about to 'drop in' as he used to call it way before he set a foot on the island. The biplane Sonic and his little friend Tails used wasn't exactly a stealthy or particularly quiet vehicle. But as the echidna thought about it, he found it was a little early for one of their visits.

Knuckles frowned, following the blue blur with his eyes. It raced past the point across of him, down a hill and into the forest at the other side of the grass hills. It had just disappeared from Knuckles' sight when the shockwave reached his position.

The echidna winced, eyes narrowed and hands pressed to the sides of his head. Yeah, he knew only on person who could get as close to shattering his eardrums just by running by…

What left the question of what Sonic wanted here so early in the morning. As it looked, he was heading straight for the Temple of Chaos. Had something bad happened? Eggman, perhaps? And where was Tails with his biplane? Normally, they landed near the Temple.

Deciding he wouldn't get answers until he reached Sonic, Knuckles started running after him. He didn't exactly have a chance to catch him. Even with the advantage of knowing the territory better than anyone else, Knuckles knew he didn't stand, or rather run, a chance against the blue hedgehog. But he knew Sonic usually only came here in search for him, and the Master Emerald shrine was admittedly the first best place to start looking for him.

The guardian was not very far from the temple when a momentarily totally unexpected sensation hit him so hard and so out of the blue that it resembled the feel of a hammer impact against his skull. _Intrusion_. Without needing to see anything of it, Knuckles could feel the sacred Emerald being grabbed, not touched, grabbed, with brute force and against its liking. He could feel it being lifted from its socket, violently removed from its rightmost place, its sanctuary.

Knuckles gasped in a sharp breath, speeding up his steps. He didn't need to ignore the feeling of branches snapping into his face and against his body as he tore through the forest. He hardly even noticed it. He only heard the hum of the Master's energy flowing through the very ground of the island growing weaker and weaker. In a few minutes it would be gone and the island would fall into the ocean. And he heard the Master Emerald's cries, its horror, the whole _wrongness_ of the displacement. His friendly visitor was almost forgotten already again. Someone bad was taking the Emerald. And he had to be stopped at all costs.

He was closing in, he could feel it, and he was closing in _quickly_. Still, where was his superfast blue hedgehog friend when he could actually be of use for once?

The question was answered suddenly, and nothing to Knuckles' liking. When the echidna burst out of the forest and onto the meadow around the Temple of Chaos, the blue hedgehog stood at the bottom of the stairs, holding the Master Emerald up with both hands.

Knuckles stopped as suddenly as if he'd run into a non-existent wall. Mouth open, he stared at the hedgehog and the glowing green gemstone. "Sonic? What…?"

Sonic turned his head just for a second, acknowledging Knuckles was there, then he was gone, accelerating so fast it seemed he'd vanished into thin air. The second sonic boom he heard today mutilated Knuckles' ears and the blur of blue tore a straight line into the bushes it moved through.

Towards the edge.

There wasn't time to think and understand what was going on. Knuckles shook himself out of his frozen position and hurried after the fleeting hedgehog and the Master Emerald. The little rational part of his brain that was still working at the moment told him it was a race lost before he even started running, but he had to try.

When he stumbled out of the forest just a minute later, it was a new personal record for the distance. His lungs were burning, his head pounded with each of his way too fast heartbeats and his legs ached, but he could still see that streak of blue.

He wouldn't catch him anyway. He had barely caught a proper look of him again when Sonic rushed over the edge and disappeared from view.

Knuckles reached the edge five or six long seconds later, skid to a stop next to it, just to look down and check where Sonic had gone. Several kilometers below, the deep blue of the ocean twinkled at the echidna with no clouds in between. But both Sonic and the Master Emerald were gone.

_How?_ The guardian stared down. Sonic couldn't fly. Neither could he swim, and if there was a plane or other vehicle he'd have heard or seen it. It was as if the very air had swallowed him up.

Shoving these thoughts aside, Knuckles considered his options. He could jump after him and try to catch him gliding, but he didn't know which way to take, there was nothing to land right below and in a few minutes the Floating Island would fall into the sea. As much as he felt the urge to follow the thief, the traitor that had so awfully betrayed his trust and friendship, how much worth was a guardian if the island ended up falling on top of him?

Knuckles shook his head. Survival first. And then… He didn't know. He didn't understand. Nothing made sense anymore…

The echidna gulped. He knew one thing with a crushing clarity, though.

He'd failed.

* * *

Sonic slowed down when the skyline of Metropolis appeared at the horizon. As much as supersonic running was a cool feat, he didn't want to get charged with a penalty if his sonic boom broke the glass of people's windows…So, the hedgehog reduced his pace to a relaxed jog again. It still made him faster than any car or vehicle, anyway.

Five minutes later Sonic had reached the city center and slowed down completely to slowly stroll through the street in search of a bakery he could get his breakfast from. He has just spotted a promising candidate at the next corner when police sirens sounded behind him.

His quills gave out a ruffling noise as Sonic's head whirled around. Behind him, two police cars had stopped, their front doors open, and two Mobians in uniform per car had gotten out onto the street and where pointing their handguns at him.

"Sonic the hedgehog, you are under arrest!", one of them shouted.

Sonic blinked, flicking his pointed ears. "Excuse me? What did I do? No supersonic running near the city, I swear!"

"Stop fooling around.! You have been filmed stealing GUN's secret material on the construction of Chaos Drives. Surrender yourself!"

Sonic groaned. "You got the wrong hedgehog. What would I do with something like that? I don't need any Chaos Drives. I suggest you go ask Shadow... and he doesn't even look _that_ much like me!"

"Agent Shadow has an alibi. I repeat just that one time: Surrender yourself peacefully." The policeman, a well rounded fat cat that should get some more exercise in Sonic's opinion, gestured around with his pistol.

"No thanks." Sonic shook his head. "This hedgehog doesn't go to jail for anything he didn't do." He waved at the officers. "We'll play a game of tag. See ya, guys!"

"No, freeze!"

Sonic did the exact opposite: He whirled around and broke into a run. From behind he could hear the policemen scrambling back into their cars to follow him. _So much about healthy exercise._ Sonic cleared the next corner, throwing a short, longing glance at the bakery, then focused on the long straight road in front of him, and boosted.

The blue hedgehog didn't waste the time to confuse his persecutors by changing directions often. He just took the direct way out of town, and then started running in different directions out in the open fields surrounding it where he had more space. When he checked behind himself, the police cars were long gone of course, but he kept up his speedy changes of directions for a little longer just to be sure no-one was following him anymore.

Now completely awake for sure, his mental gears were working as fast as his feet. Someone had stolen GUN's Chaos Drives. No, not the drives themselves but some kind of secret stuff on how you made Chaos Drives. And they had filmed that thief.

And for some reason, they thought he was the thief.

This in itself didn't even confuse Sonic that much. He didn't exactly consider the Mobian authorities particularly intelligent. No-one there ever managed to find a way dealing with Eggman, or with any other crisis for that matter. And when Shadow appeared the first time and stole a Chaos Emerald, they arrested Sonic for it. It felt like deja-vú.

Most of the time if he thought about it, Sonic laughed at the ridiculousness of it. Really, black hedgehog – blue hedgehog. It shouldn't be that hard to see. Even on a black and white picture you could clearly see Shadow's turned up quills, while Sonic's own curved downwards. It was more than obvious. To Sonic at least.

But aside of his amusement about GUN's failures, there were other feelings that lingered in the back of Sonic's mind now that he was reminded of the events about a year and a half ago. It was what really had made him want to run instead of talking to the police and figuring things out that way. There was something currently not too dormant burning in Sonic's chest; something he would almost call fear.

They had taken him to their Prison Island. They had locked him in a cell. A small room without windows, just blank concrete and metal bars. And no matter how much Sonic had strained himself to look unaffected, behind the mask of put-on casualness he'd been terrified. Locked up. In a _cage_.

There was nothing, _nothing_ , Sonic needed more than his freedom. He needed space to run, to feel the wind, to breathe. To _live_. Neither of those fundamental things had been in the prison cell. Being locked up felt almost like being stuck underwater and feeling your air running out with no bubbles or the surface in sight. Suffocating, slowly draining your life away.

Getting out of the cell and running across the platforms of Metal Harbor, feeling the wind brush through his spines again and smelling the sea, had been just as relieving as breaking though the water surface and gulping in a lungful of fresh air. It _revived_ him.

No, Sonic never ever wanted to be locked up again. He had made an agreement with himself on that one. He would never let anyone lock him into a tiny room ever again.

Of course, he knew that even he, fastest thing alive or not, couldn't run away forever. He had to find out what was going on. The best would of course be he found out who stole this apparently top-secret material so GUN could arrest someone else…

The blue hedgehog sighed. He was sure there was no-one on his heels anymore. By now, he had been running far enough from the city to reach a tropical jungle. Thick leaves shaded his path from overhead and a lot of giant trees stood in the way. Sonic didn't mind. While he couldn't go full speed here any more, the jungle would make him invisible.

So, where to go from here? He needed to find out what was going on, and he needed someone he could trust to help him to get to the bottom of things. He needed…

_Tails_.

Sonic nodded to himself and turned in the direction where he roughly knew the Mystic Ruins would be.


	2. Under Suspicion

Tails sighed and adjusted his rucksack. The straps heavily weighted down on his shoulders. No surprise here, the bag was full of technical equipment, or rather what would become parts of technical equipment. Cables, material for transistors and capacitors, stuff for isolation… In short, it was full of a lot of parts he needed for the Tornado. His trusty biplane was undergoing a complete overhaul at the moment.

For now satisfied with the contribution of weight on his back, the two-tailed fox continued his walk, heading back towards the railway station. The streets of Station Square were rather empty at the moment. Also the shops had not been too full. The morning rush hour was just over and by noon he would be long gone again. Tails preferred his shopping trips that way; it spared him a lot of useless waiting time and he would be back home faster.

He stopped at an intersection, watching the cars slowly drive past him, looking for a good moment to cross the road. He had already put one foot on the pavement of the street when a voice called from behind him.

"Miles Prower?!"

Tails stopped and withdrew his foot, turning over his shoulder in surprise. Nobody called him by his real name. It was always just 'Tails'. "Excuse me?"

A tall white bear held out his wallet at him, briefly flipping it open. If it was meant to actually show him anything in it remained obscure to Tails; all he could glimpse in the short moment was something reflecting the sunlight in it. "Lieutenant MacDim, GUN. We have a few questions. You are to follow me immediately." His tone made clear he wouldn't accept no for an answer.

"Uh, okay… What's it about?" Tails turned fully around, his namesakes beginning to nervously play behind his back. He didn't like being with strangers much, authoritarian strangers even less. _I wish Sonic was here_ , he thought. The hedgehog would surely have some wise-crack comeback that would sufficiently silence the GUN guy.

"I am not authorized to tell you," was the only reply Tails got to his question. The bear led him silently along the road and up to a parking lot. He stopped next to a rather large, black car. Even the windows were black, not allowing Tails to catch a look inside. The GUN Lieutenant opened the back door of the car, gesturing to Tails to get inside.

The fox gulped. Should he refuse? After all, GUN weren't exactly close friends, what if they were up to something bad? But… something about this whole thing had made Tails curious. After all, Sonic wouldn't hesitate to hop in the car, would he?

No. And he wouldn't either.

Tails nodded to no-one but himself and slipped past the bear into the fond of the vehicle. In trying to handle his large rucksack he ended up flopping into the leather cushioning of the seats. He looked around and his eyes stopped on the person sitting across of him on the rearwards facing seats.

She was an unusual sight to say the least. Her fur was snow-white, her ears twice as big as his own, also not particularly small ones. Her face wore a smug smirk, with lip-gloss glittering around her mouth and her turquoise eyes twinkled in what looked like distant amusement. Instead of some sort of everyday clothing for Mobian females, her shaped body was dressed in a black jump suit and her feet stuck in white long-shafted, high-heeled boots.

"Rouge!"

The bat's smirk grew to a smile. "Correct. Good morning, honey."

"What's going on?", Tails asked, distractedly noticing the Lieutenant had also climbed into the car and now took a seat next to Rouge.

The treasure huntress and part-time GUN agent shrugged, crossing her legs leisurely at the knees. "It happens my superiors are throwing a real riot about finding that blue hedgehog pal of yours."

"Sonic?" Tails blinked.

Rouge lazily waved her hand. "Unless you happen to have any other blue hedgehog friends, yes, Sonic. You haven't seen him recently?"

"What do you want?", Tails asked instead of answering her.

"Sonic the Hedgehog is suspect to have stolen GUN top secret material," MacDim cut in before Rouge had a change to reply.

Tails' jaw dropped for a moment, then reproach managed to slip onto his features. "Sonic doesn't do such a thing!"

"You are not in the position to decide that," the bear gave back harshly. "You might as well be a comrade of his."

Tails sucked in a breath. "I –"

"Have you seen Sonic?", Rouge interrupted, her tone still calm and with this typical superior professionalism in it Tails had never seen on anyone else.

"What was it that was being stolen?" Tails simply skipped on the bat's question.

MacDim was about to get at the fox again, but Rouge shut him off with a wave of her hand. "A bunch of top secret data sheets about the construction of Chaos Drives," she informed Tails.

The young fox felt his eyes widen. "Of Chaos Drives," he echoed. "And… what makes you think Sonic did that? What would he even want with that sort of data?"

"We captured evidence of his deeds on a surveillance camera," the Lieutenant said. "By the way, where were _you_ yesterday evening?"

Tails' double tails thudded the seat next to him. "At my house in the Mystic Ruins. I'm working on the Tornado; I'm doing a complete overhaul of it and-"

"Anyone can prove that?"

Tails shrugged slightly nervously. "Uh, a thousand of disassembled aircraft parts in the workshop?"

Apparently not caring much about the given answer, the bear already fired the next question at Tails. "What are you doing in Station Square?"

"Shopping for stuff I needed to rebuild and improve my plane," Tails replied, trying to stay calm. This was getting ridiculous.

"What's in that bag?"

The fox groaned. "What do you think? The stuff I was shopping for. I was just about to head to the station to go back home."

MacDim's eyes turned piercing. "Why not use that plane you mentioned? Is maybe Sonic using it?"

"No, he's not." Tails shook his head, still trying to decide if he was more worried or annoyed. "I told you already. I'm rebuilding the plane. It's in pieces. No, it doesn't fly around. Not today, and not yesterday either. Okay?"

Leaned casually into her seat, Rouge giggled quietly. MacDim however skipped on Tails' input again. "Now have you anything to say to the subject's whereabouts?"

Tails exasperatedly shook his head. "And you're really sure it's Sonic? Just asking, 'cause you know, you guys already mistook someone else for him before…"

A smirk dashed over Rouge's face and MacDim ground his teeth. "Be careful what you say…"

"Do you have any idea what Sonic could be up to with the data?", Rouge continued the conversation, once again ignoring her colleague. If he even was that.

"You really think he did that?" Tails frowned at the bat. GUN, yeah, they weren't exactly all that smart. But he'd thought of Rouge in better terms, not particularly on her trustworthiness, but at least on her sense of realism.

She shrugged. "Not really. Actually, I think this is a stupid idea, but I was tasked with the investigation and they wanted me to investigate in this direction primarily, so… Let's just treat the question hypothetically, shall we?"

"Uh, okay." Tails scratched his head. Hypothetical sounded bearable, even if no less idiotic. "But really, Sonic wouldn't have any use for a Chaos Drive construction sheet or whatever you guys lost. He's not exactly an inventor. He wouldn't even know what to do with a data sheet. Sonic doesn't build stuff. That's my thing, actually."

"I told you," MacDim spoke up again, turning to Rouge. "He's involved in it! Maybe even the driving force! We have to arrest –"

"We arrest nobody right now, Lieutenant." Rouge shook her head, eyes for a moment trading the hidden mirth for a sharp glare that was only insufficiently concealed by her long eye lashes. "Am I clear?"

"Yes, Ma'am…", the bear grumbled, sitting back on his seat heavily.

A smirk was still playing around Rouge's lips when she turned back to Tails, the glare already faded to make place for that look that suggested she found at least mild entertainment in the situation. "Fine. If Sonic doesn't have use for this stuff, would you, just hypothetically again, have use for it?"

Tails firmly shook his head. "For a Chaos Drive? No thanks. The things are lame."

"What?", MacDim piped up again in spite of having just been ticked off.

Tails found a smirk form on his face now for the first time since he was here. Finally he was starting to feel a little more as if he had the situation in his hands. "Asking me if I could use a plan on how to make Chaos Drives is… like asking the inventor of a fighter jet if he needs a plan on how to fold a paper flyer."

Rouge stifled a laugh, but MacDim leaned closer to Tails, rubbing the back of his head. "You are implying?"

"He's implying he's playing in a different league than Chaos Drives…", Rouge trailed.

"I am," Tails nodded, inwardly grinning about the slow GUN Lieutenant. "I've been making own Chaos Emerald copies, with almost the same energetic properties as the real ones. A Chaos Drive isn't really interesting to me."

Rouge shrugged. "Actually, that is what I've been saying all along. Neither you nor Sonic really has a motive. Why steal a piece of glass if you have your own diamonds?" She paused for a moment. "You still haven't answered my question, though."

Tails sighed, but gave in. At least Rouge seemed on his side. He figured he could give her something in return. "No, I haven't seen Sonic. He left about a week ago for some sort of trip. I have no idea where he is when he goes on one of his runs."

"Oh well. I suppose it would have been too easy." She reached into her pocket and pulled a small card out of it. "Here, that's my number. Call me if you get to see Sonic. It's easiest for you if you find someone who's been with him yesterday evening."

"Okay… if you call me when you find out something about who really did it." Tails took the card.

The white bat nodded at him. "Good, we'll call that a deal, cutie." She turned to MacDim and was already opening her mouth to say something to him, when a beeping noise sounded from some close to invisible pocket of her catsuit. Rouge fished a tiny sort of cell phone out of it and held it to her ear to answer the call. "Yes? … You are sure, Sir? … Of course not. … I have Tails with me. … Yes, I'm sure he didn't. … Yes, Sir. Bye." She put her phone away. She looked irritated, at least as far as Tails was able to read into her posture. "That was my boss. Guess who just broke into GUN's headquarters." She gave him a meaningful look.

Tails dropped back against the seat. "That's some kind of mistake."

Rouge shrugged. "I don't know. But for now I'm coming with you."

Tails opened his mouth to protest, but then figured it probably wouldn't help him at all. After all, Rouge was better than anyone else, right? "I can still go home?"

"Yeah. Nobody really wants to be accused of holding a minor, I guess. Just look at me like some random visitor, cutie." She smiled a little, moving to open the door of the car.

"Ma'am?"

The white bat gestured for the bear to stay as he was. "You have orders to stay here. Keep me informed in case something happens."

"Yes, Agent Rouge." The grumbling undertone said better than his compliant words that this totally didn't coincide with his plans. But apparently the bat was some sort of superior to him, Tails noticed with slight amusement.

Rouge obviously couldn't have cared less. She got out the car and waited patiently until Tails was all set with his full rucksack. "Shall we go?"

Tails nodded, surrendering to his fate. "Okay."

* * *

From where he stood at the island's edge, Knuckles could hear the waves crashing against its socket. Across the ocean, melting into a blurry horizon, he saw a coastline. The guardian tilted his head as he judged the distance. Probably a few miles. It could have been worse, but if he didn't want to swim all the way, he better started his glide from the highest position he could get.

Slowly the echidna turned around and headed towards the mountains in the formerly floating island's center, jogging. From what he could see, the forests hadn't sustained any serious damage during the fall, and the little animals had calmed down again. Knuckles hardly paid attention to the Flickies' usually almost enchanting songs or the beauty of the forests, though. He just couldn't get his mind wrapped around what just happened.

He couldn't begin to understand _why_ it had happened. Why _Sonic_? He'd known the blue hedgehog for years. He knew his attitude, his cockiness, his impatience, his recklessness, his tendency to make fun out of everything… He knew _him_. Or he thought he did. Didn't he?

For the past years, Knuckles thought he shared something with Sonic he shared only with less than a handful of people. While it was true they had been somewhat enemies on first encounter, they didn't stay it for long. At first, it was mere coincidence that made them allies several times. Common enemy, common goals, all that.

Knuckles didn't really remember when he'd started growing attached to the blue spiky freak and his little two-tailed sidekick. At some point they'd suddenly been much more than allies in a fight against Eggman and his latest plan of doom. At some point, he'd come along on their adventures because he wanted to. At some point, he'd been almost looking forward to their visits, to their attempts talking him into coming along for something like another Extreme Gear Grand Prix or something similar. He'd never let in on how little strain they would really need to invest to make him join them. Because he, dare he admit it, enjoyed the company. He'd always been alone. He was used to it. Heck, he enjoyed alone time usually. But there was something about being with Sonic and Tails that made it, and if just sometimes, more desirable than being on his own.

In short, Knuckles had thought of Sonic as his friend. Damn it, he even thought to the hedgehog he'd been his best friend after Tails. He'd been along for so long… and while he usually didn't admit it, he valued it. A lot. And he'd thought Sonic did too.

_Sonic_. Thinking the hedgehog's name was disturbing. In the first instant after thinking it, it'd trigger the mental image of his face wearing the trademark grin, followed by a few random memories of things he'd done. Memories of stupid things, unimportant things, and memories of the times when Sonic had saved the world alike. Memories of how he'd only half-seriously said thank you after fighting that Metal Madness monster robot, how he'd asked him to take care of Tails and Amy, the ones he deemed himself responsible for, after falling out of thin air with his first chaos teleport ever, how he'd tried showing Knuckles how to ride a tight turn on a hover board and fallen flat on his face, but had just laughed about it along with everybody.

And then, cutting through these pictures, came the image of the spiky blue shape carrying the Master Emerald off, faster than Knuckles could follow, and jumping over the edge. Away, gone. All of it. Like cut from his life with a dull blade.

Knuckles tried in vain to gulp down the lump in his throat. He didn't _understand_. Why, after all these things they'd been through together, why would Sonic do that? Why turn his back on him like that?

That he'd just taken the Emerald behind his back made it worse to Knuckles. He'd not even given him a chance to fight for it. He'd not even _bothered_ to confront him. Had not bothered explaining the why. Had Sonic been playing with him all these years? Had the smiles and the friendly little nonsense and all that been just show? Nothing but an act? Had he really been toyed with all that time without noticing? And Knuckles had fallen for it? Could someone, anyone, be that _dumb_?

Knuckles didn't know. He was aware he'd been tricked a lot. But he'd been younger. He'd been inexperienced, with people and their ways. Because people confused him. He'd never known people. But now? He'd been apparently fooled by the person he thought he knew best, by the person he thought he could _trust_ best. How could he, after knowing he'd been tricked so many times already, still be foolish enough to trust _anyone_?

He'd been tricked a lot, yeah. But all of those former times, it had never hurt as much. It was as if he'd been kicked in the gut from a direction he would have never expected. This time, he wasn't just an Emerald guardian that had his Emerald stolen and had to hunt down the thief. He was disappointed, hurt, and yeah, _alone_. More alone than he'd even been before.

The echidna bit his lip. He'd never considered being alone as dreadful... But right now it felt just that.

Stopping his absent-minded jog upon reaching his goal, Knuckles looked down into the deep crater, down onto the blistering heat of Lava Reef. Against the opposite wall of the volcano crater, he could see the air flickering in the stream of hot air rising from the island's core.

For a short moment he closed his eyes, drew a deep breath that smelled of sulphur and ashes. He needed answers, and there was only one person that could give him answers. He had to find Sonic. And he'd make him speak, be it the last thing he'd do. He needed to know why his best friend had suddenly turned a traitor.

Knuckles opened his eyes, briefly flexed his muscles, then jumped clear off the ledge and out over the crater. His dreadlock-like spines flared, catching air to keep him in a stable glide. After just a second he hit the first thermal rising from the lava below, and his stomach suddenly felt strangely light when it lifted him up. Gliding circles, Knuckles let the thermals carry him upwards until they grew weaker and weaker and he could clearly see the land in the distance across the water.

Then he turned away from the volcano and glided towards the distant coastline.

* * *

A hard and steady, hot desert wind was pushing against Sonic from the left. It didn't actually match the strength of the wind the hedgehog's own speed created, but it was dry and carried a lot of dust and sand in it. Hard to breathe, like sanding paper down your throat.

Sonic slightly shook his head. It was a weird thing that came with being born the fastest thing alive. While you could get everywhere pretty fast, it still took hours to get somewhere you wanted sometimes if it was distant enough, and a journey like that brought along traversing through various different zones, even through various different climates and seasons.

While it had been spring in the zone Sonic had spent the night, the tropical region around the equator was like constant summer, hot and dry here, hot and wet in the jungles further north. And once he'd passed those and would come near to his goal, he'd find it to be autumn there.

Actually, Sonic liked autumn. He liked the colorful leaves in the forests, how the winds would whirl them around. He even enjoyed, at least if watching from inside somewhere, the storms, the thunder and rain. There was something fascinating about it, something… mighty. He just better didn't tell Tails about his opinion. The little fox detested lightening and storms, almost as much as Sonic hated water.

Thinking of Tails caused Sonic to speed up a little again and half an hour later he had left the desert behind, crossing into less dry landscape, with actual trees and lush green meadows. Sonic smiled. Not far anymore.

Sonic slowed down when he reached the first of Mystic Ruins' hills and jogged the last part of his way. Something about coming here was almost like coming home, as close as the free spirited hedgehog would ever come to this sort of feeling maybe.

Tails' house and workshop that was partly Sonic's home as well was a building of unusual style to say the least. Built on top a hill overlooking the blue sea, it stood in solitude next to a long blank space leading towards the cliffs. Tails' airstrip for the Tornado, their biplane. The house itself was a strange mixture of living quarters and workshop, with small balconies on its roof, small ponds of water at one side, with wooden mechanisms agitating them, a small door next to it and a large, old garage flair portal for the hanger.

Sonic walked up to the door, not bothering to knock. To his surprise, it was locked, what meant Tails wasn't at home. The blue hedgehog shrugged to himself. In that case, he'd just wait inside. He typed a password into the panel sticking to the wall next to the door. A tiny buzzing noise chimed up when it unlocked and Sonic stepped inside the house.

He ended up in the hangar and workshop, a large room covering the complete first floor of the house, with a stairway at the far end of it leading to the living quarters upstairs. Usually, Tails kept his workshop tidy and incredibly organized, but today Sonic found himself faced with thousands of single pieces, spread across the floor, the working tables… Even to Sonic it was obvious where they came from: There was nothing much left of the Tornado but a hull.

" _Oh_. Looks like someone got really bored while I was gone," the hedgehog mumbled. Still, there was a good thing about this mess here: It told him Tails would be back soon.


	3. Broken Confidences

Finding the messed-up hangar uncomfortable to stay in and the empty house kind of boring, Sonic strolled back outside shortly after his arrival. The day was sunny and the breeze from the sea not yet too cold to enjoy. He considered taking another little run just to pass the time, but then he opted for a relaxing little nap in the sun in front of the house instead.

Kipped against the treads of the small stairway with closed eyes, enjoying the warm beams of sun on his fur, Sonic was just beginning to doze off when a shadow fell on him.

His green eyes blinked open and he squinted up at the familiar red echidna in front of him. "You're standing in my sun, you know?"

"Is that all you have to say? 'You're standing in my sun'? After everything you did?" There was a deep growl in Knuckles' voice, something tight, terse and downright threatening, but before Sonic had adjusted to it, the echidna's large hands had gripped him hard by the shoulders and jerked him to his feet.

"Hey!", Sonic complained, starting to struggle against the unfortunately quite successful attempt at manhandling him.

"This is not the time for _heys_ ," Knuckles growled without letting go of him; instead, he drew the hedgehog so close their noses almost touched. "Just tell me why you did it."

"Did what?" Something about the utter ire in Knuckles' eyes was close to frightening, moreso even because Sonic had never really seen _this_. Angry Knuckles, yes. But not like _this_.

"Damn, hedgehog, I saw you! And I know you saw me, too," the echidna fumed. "So stop denying!"

Sonic coughed as he was shaken roughly. "I… have no idea what you're even talking about!" Mentally, he tried to go through the last times he'd seen the red echidna, trying to work out what he could have done back then that would still piss him off _now_ , but he came up blank.

The fact that the Emerald guardian was still holding onto him as if he'd get ready to strangle him didn't improve the thought process either.

Knuckles grimly shook his head. "Maybe I'll have to help your memory out a little then…"

Before Sonic had the chance to try understanding what he meant by that, he was lifted off his feet as if weighing nothing and thrown against the wall of the house a couple meters behind him. His quills instinctively stiffened right before the impact and he slid down the wall relatively unharmed, but with his breath knocked out of him, and still very confused.

Knuckles stood unmoving, watching him slowly crawl back to his feet. Sonic tried in vain to read in the dark amethyst of the eyes focused on him, but there was too much in them to get through. Knuckles' entire stance was hard, as was his face and also his eyes bore the expression. He was infuriated, although Sonic didn't understand what he had done to haved caused it. And yet, there was something underlying in the look of his eyes, something… hurt?

"Man, Knuckles, what -?"

The echidna slowly walked over to him, watching him with sharp, narrowed eyes. "I trusted you, all these years. I saved your life. You saved mine. I gave you my friendship. And you – _turned around_ on me." Knuckles' fists were still clenched at his sides and Sonic noticed a second too late he was in reach.

When the echidna's namesakes smashed into his jaw, the hedgehog was lucky he'd not been hit with the spikes on them, but just plain fist. Still, it felt like the impact of a comet. Sonic was thrown to the side by the blow, colorful stars exploding behind his forehead and washing through the rest of his skull in a dizzying spiral as he crashed against the wall of the water pond next to the house.

Head pounding wildly, Sonic needed a moment until he managed to crawl to all fours. He warily glanced up at Knuckles. The red echidna stood next to him, watching him spit out a bit of blood, but he didn't move from his stand.

And nothing of this made sense. Sonic _really_ would have liked to know why he was getting a beating today. "Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong…"

Knuckles ground his teeth. "At least admit it… Traitor!"

Sonic pulled himself up, using the wall of the pond for support. "Then tell me what you're accusing me of!"

A snort. "You stole the Master Emerald!"

Sonic blinked, taken aback for a little moment. Then annoyance hit. "Of course, it's the shiny stone again. Isn't it always –"

A second later the hedgehog could tell this comment, at this time, had not been exactly wise. He was however so much expecting it by now that he managed to dodge the next uppercut so he didn't score a full hit again but Knuckles' fist just grazed by the side of his skull.

It hurt a lot nonetheless.

Down on the floor the third time in less than a minute, Sonic noticed with another short glance at the echidna he was in so far lucky Knuckles, unlike Shadow for example, didn't seem intent on punching or kicking an opponent while down. A remarkable notion given his temper at the moment….

"Knuckles, try to calm down and we can talk –"

"I don't do 'talk' with alikes of you. It's not my job talking to traitors." The red echidna glared down on him. "Tell me where the Emerald is and I'll come back for the why and for _you_ later."

Sonic again crawled to his feet, wary eyes on Knuckles. This was ridiculous, and he was starting to get pretty ticked off as well. "Listen, Knuckles. I haven't seen your Emerald in _months_!"

"Liar!" The guardian's spiked fist once more charged at Sonic, but the hedgehog was expecting it by now. Deciding he was more than sick of playing punching bag for Knuckles and his problems, Sonic dived away, felling the echidna with a well-aimed kick into the hollow of the knee as he passed him.

"Okay, fine! You want a fight? I'll give you a fight! It's not the first time I punch your lights out because you got something wrong!" Sonic stood upright, fisting his own hands as he watched Knuckles quickly get back to his feet.

Had he been angry before, now the echidna's violet eyes were blazing. "Good! Trust me, when I'm ready with you you'll not only tell me what you did with the Master Emerald, but be begging for me to finish it!"

* * *

"Beginning scan…"

The giant gemstone placed in the center of the laboratory was throwing its green light into the room around it, shifting the color values from the blues that dominated the entire base towards mint. The powerful radiation interfered with the optical sensory, causing spouts of static and flickers that increased in a frequency he had not yet managed to analyze to an intensity where it almost whited out the signal reaching his Next Risk Chip Series 3 Model graphics processor cores.

In spite of the interference, he didn't mind the radiation. Quite the opposite even. The way it bristled against the blue metal tektite of his outer armor was promising. If Unit E-S02 would have been able to put on a crazed grin, he would have adapted it by now. The way things were, he did not, but the red optics remained fixed on the gem in front of him.

The Master Emerald. The Master of the seven Chaos Emeralds. The most powerful object on the planet. He could feel this power, close to overloading his sensory, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough. Would never be.

Unit E-S02 was intent on having even more power to himself. More power, worthy of the mightiest invention his creator Dr. Ivo Robotnik, more commonly known by the name of 'Eggman', had ever created. Created in the image of his greatest foe, put into existence for the sole purpose of defeating him. His creator kept failing at his plans, but E-S02, codename 'Metal Sonic', meant to get ahead of him. He _would_ , once and for all, _defeat Sonic_. He would prove to the world that he was the _real_ Sonic.

He had been close once. Too close. But even after his humiliating defeat, after having been dumped and almost forgotten before picked up and overhauled by Dr. Robotnik again, Metal Sonic didn't consider a change of plans. He certainly _was_ the best of his creator's robots. Unlike the usual badniks, his AI wasn't based on simple algorithms. The series of robots that left Robotnik's assemblies every day acted based on their programming. It was basically a principle of action and reaction. They did what their routines made them do, and if they encountered something, they reacted to it, according to their priority programming.

Metal Sonic was different. His AI had never been designed to simply _react_ to something with two or three options. He had been given actual intelligence, artificial life and will, and was able to plot his own strategies and plans, adjust his actions. Out of all the robots Dr. Robotnik had created in his life, Metal Sonic was the only one that learned, and therefore the only one that would ever be capable of destroying Sonic.

And he had learned a lot. He'd watched his master through years of recurring failure, up to the point where he'd taken over his position to finally rid the world of his loathsome biological copy. He had not succeeded, but he had not failed, either. Deep down in his systems' subroutines, even after he'd been almost destroyed and reprogrammed to be another obedient robot slave, Metal Sonic's mind remained waiting, with all the data he'd gained over time.

Even as he was working for Robotnik again, he gathered more data, better data. He had improved his hardware until he was fully independent of Robotnik's bases. Without his master's noticing, he'd searched for a base of his own and finally tracked it down underneath the sea near the city of Soleanna, in form of a laboratory abandoned long ago. Forgotten by history and well hidden under the surface of the ocean, but full of advanced technology for his own use.

Now, with his own headquarters and no longer kept from putting his plans into action by idiotic schemes his creator came up with, Metal Sonic was finally able to begin to pursue the next steps of his plan. He had improved his cloaking device, fitted himself with hundreds of nano holograms that allowed him to take on the form of his hated biological counterpart perfectly, down to the structure of skin, fur and quills. Unless someone touched him, nothing indicated the polished metal underneath. This perfection of his disguise would soon come to take on a core role of his scheme.

Of course, it was already coming to use at the current state of his plan. In disguise, he'd been able to obtain the Master Emerald and get his hands on data he would require later and that had been unavailable from his creator's databases. Unfortunately, also the data he had acquired didn't completely enable him to carry out his plans to the full yet.

He would need to initiate the second stage of his plan soon.

"Scan completed," the voice of Aquatic Base's computer system informed him.

Metal Sonic didn't need to move from his stand to immediately download the results to his internal memory. Now there was nothing about the energetic properties of the Master Emerald he didn't know. Out of the three important objectives he'd had for it, one was served now. His final plan wouldn't require the gemstone itself. First of all, it would be bait for his enemies.

And then, the perfect, final trap for his greatest foe.


	4. Unwelcome Alibi

The twenty minutes of train ride from Station Square to the very end of the railway line at the coast of Mystic Ruins passed in syrupy silence.

Tails tried to look occupied by staring intently out the windows, as if he'd never seen the landscape rushing past before and as if it was the most interesting thing he'd seen in a while. The truth was, he'd of course been on this train hundreds of times. He knew every bush, every hill, maybe even every flower next to the track almost like his own backyard.

But he didn't want to be staring at Rouge instead; it could have been easily interpreted as nosiness, or worse, a silent cue to start a conversation.

It wasn't that Tails disliked the bat. He didn't like her that much either; she was one of the people he had little to do with and that were 'just there', in a way. On every normal occasion, Rouge belonged to the group of people Tails would greet, maybe even a little happy to see a familiar face, then he'd exchanged some words with her, on what she was doing and that kind of small talk stuff, and then they'd go their ways.

The few times things had not gone like that had always included some kind of crisis that forced Rouge, her enigmatic agent colleague and friend Shadow and their robot comrade E-123 Omega to work together with Tails and the others.

This time it was different. Rouge wasn't around as a person he happened to know he'd met randomly, neither was she here in the role of a somewhat friendly ally. It was the first time Tails remembered the white bat really _felt_ like a GUN agent to him, although he had to admit to himself she seemed to be more on his side than her colleague or underling or whatever he was in Station Square. Tails had no idea what position or rank Rouge, or Shadow for that matter, held in GUN. Apparently it was a higher one that the dim-witted guy they'd left in the city.

Secretly Tails was glad about that…

Still, no matter how much more on his side the female bat appeared to be, she was a part of an agency Tails didn't really trust, and right now this agency was hunting down his best friend and sole family member. The two-tailed fox was sure it was a farce, or some kind of stupid mistake. Actually, Rouge seemed to think in similar ways, but that didn't change that she accompanied him not to help prove Sonic's innocence, but more like watching over him. It was like she was here to keep an eye on Tails so he couldn't commit any crimes. It made him feel like a suspect. Distrusted and somewhat humiliated.

So he kept his quiet and tried to ignore Rouge's presence. There was nothing he could have told her, anyway.

If the white furred agent minded the silence remained her secret; if she did, she had the decency not to show it and she didn't try to start a conversation on her own. At least Tails didn't feel like a criminal in cross-examination anymore.

When the train slowed down to stop at the final station, overlooking the sea, the young fox wondered what he'd do with his 'guest' once he got home. He was eager to get going with his work on the Tornado… but he wasn't sure how much of the technical details of it he wanted witnessed by a government spy. He wasn't sure at all on Rouge's knowledge when it came to technology, but he wouldn't like finding one of his newest inventions on a GUN machine that could some day turn against them.

Putting his rucksack back on, Tails slowly strolled out the train and continued down the wooden stairs. Usually, he shortcut his way home by just flying from the top platform, unless he had non-flying company. Rouge clearly didn't qualify as that, but his backpack was so heavy Tails didn't feel like flying with it and risk dropping out of the sky halfway down… especially not with her watching. That would be embarrassing.

Rouge followed silently, but when they reached the bottom of the stairs and walked over the grassy hills, she gestured around, a small smile on her face. "You know, it's not a bad place to live at you have here."

Tails smiled a little. "Thanks. I like to have my peace and quiet more than people around, so it's right perfect." He noticed only how that must have sounded to his uninvited visitor after he'd already said it, so he hurriedly continued in an attempt to at least look like a remotely good host and gentleman. "And the look over the sea is really great, too."

The bat nodded. "Guess I'd find it nice for a holiday here. On the long run, there's not enough nightlife for ol me."

"I'm not really the nightlife person," Tails replied.

Rouge laughed shortöy. "Anything else would have surprised me. I –" She was interrupted by the beeping of her cell phone in her suit's pocket. Stopping her walk, she reached for it and answered the call.

Tails had stopped walking as well, watching her. She said nothing but a few times of 'yes' before putting the phone away again, the expression on her face suddenly a little more serious. "What's it?", Tails asked.

For a moment the bat looked at him, one eyebrow raised, then she shrugged. "A blue, superfast hedgehog has broken into the science lab of the leading ring capsule manufacturer and taken all development material on the construction of these capsules with him."

Tails stared at her. "When?" It spoke volumes that he was way past the 'What?' at this stage.

"Just a few minutes ago." Rouge looked at Tails. "I think your pal's in trouble."

Tails shook his head. "There is some kind of mistake. Sonic doesn't do something like that."

The agent and treasure huntress folded her arms. "I don't really think he does either, truth be told. There's no motive. It doesn't make sense. But I can't help it, Tails. The Commander just ordered me to stay with you for now… And he wants me to search your house for something suspicious."

"What?" Now he was back at the 'What the heck?' stage again. Yes, they were making progress fast.

Rouge shrugged slightly. "I'm sorry, Tails. If I don't find anything, you're probably rid of me again. We'll just get over with this quickly, okay? Then you can have your peace and quiet back, and I can do something sensible. We're both not in the greatest situation."

Tails sighed. It sounded like a point, and it sounded remarkably sincere given who he was talking to. "Okay. Let's go…"

The unlikely pair continued their walk slowly, neither of them very eager to get to the house. They slowly ascended the stairway to the first blank platform next to Tails' house, crossed it and were about to take the next set of steps up to the flat top of the hill the building sat on when suddenly a tangled lump of blue and red blurs rolled and bounced down these stairs.

It rolled over the flat ground before hitting a rock and coming to a stop, revealing two teenaged Mobians. A red echidna was pressing a blue hedgehog down to the dusty soil with his left knee on the small of his back between the tail and the two arced spikes on the hedgehog's shoulder blades, and the large, white-gloved hand pushed the spiked head down. "Finally had enough, traitor? Just tell me where the Emerald is and it's over…"

"No luck, Red…" Sonic coughed a little from the sand he'd inhaled when speaking, but suddenly and quickly jerked his body to the side.

Apparently the movement was too fast for Knuckles and having been leaned onto the hedgehog he ended up falling forwards when Sonic was suddenly gone and jumping to his feet next to him.

Not slow on reactions himself, the red echidna rapidly scrambled to his feet, briefly lost his balance, was still quick to jump at Sonic again after he shook himself briefly, but the hedgehog stepped out of the way faster than the naked eye could follow. He jumped when Knuckles rushed past him, landing a flying kick in Knuckles' back that floored the echidna.

Tails stared open-mouthedly at the fight before him. He had totally forgotten about Rouge's presence until she spoke up. "Oh wow, looks like we came at a bad moment…"

Knuckles was still on all fours, his long spines a mess, but his head snapped around at the sound of her sultry voice. "You!"

"Way about giving a girl a nice welcome, Knucky." Rouge smirked, and Tails wondered how she could possibly find the situation funny.

"Shut up, Emerald thief," Knuckles growled, finally back on his feet. "I'll get over to deal with you right after I'm done with _that_ one." He didn't take the time to point at Sonic, but the way he launched himself at the hedgehog was totally sufficient indicating who he meant.

Sonic dodged the first blow of a spiked fist aiming for him, but the second that followed immediately grazed by his side, throwing him a few meters through the air and shredding to a stop in front of Tails' and Rouge's feet. Slowly he got back upright, holding his side. "Hey, Tails. Do me a favor and talk some sense into that Knucklehead, will ya?"

Tails blinked, studying his friend's dirty and bruised appearance. "Just what's going on, Sonic?"

"Ask _him_! He's the one who turned up here out of the blue, trying to make hedgehog pancake out of me!" Sonic pointed an accusing finger at Knuckles.

"Don't believe a word of what he says, Tails," Knuckles cut in before Tails had a chance. "He's been lying to me all the time; he might as well be lying to you! He stole the Master Emerald this morning!"

Tails felt his jaw drop. After a stunned second his mental gears resumed spinning, though. He needed a moment to close his mouth again, then he turned to Rouge. "He can't have been here and in this factory at the same time, right?"

The bat smirked, turning to the red echidna. "Knuckles, when exactly did Sonic steal your Emerald?"

"Right in the morning, not long after dawn. He probably came to the island over night to prepare himself!" Knuckles' violet eyes shot daggers in Sonic's direction.

"And how long have you two been here, punching each other's brains out?", Rouge continued, seemingly ignoring the hostility.

The question seemed to surprise the echidna and he finally interrupted his staring contest with Sonic, flashing a short glance at Rouge before looking up at the sun and checking its angle over the hills, head tilted a little in thought. "Half an hour, I guess. Why's that important?"

"Because you just gave Big Blue there an alibi, a quite believable one, actually." Rouge smiled smugly.

"I what?"

"What's she talking about, Tails?", Sonic asked, still holding his side and keeping a careful eye on Knuckles.

"GUN's searching for you, Sonic. They apparently think you stole some stuff from them. They think they saw you on surveillance cameras, yesterday evening and a few minutes ago," Tails explained. "But if you're here with Knuckles, you can't have done it."

Sonic shook his head. "Why does everybody accuse me of stuff today? First the police guys in Metropolis, then Knuckles, now GUN… Way about my holidays."

"You've been in Metropolis, this morning?", Rouge asked. It sounded like a random question, but Tails had caught the gaze she'd trained on the hedgehog. Tails didn't know Rouge that well, but right now he was sure she'd see it if Sonic tried to lie to her.

The hedgehog didn't seem all that aware on the hawkish look on him. "Yeah. Got there…. around nine or something." Sonic nodded. "Before that I was in Emerald Hill. I've been sleeping there and got to Metropolis for breakfast, but instead the police was suddenly hunting me down. So I came here to ask Tails what's going on, but he wasn't home. I sat down to wait for him, and then Knuckles turned up in the worst mood _ever_."

"That was very interesting, Sonic. It seems like there's someone looking like you going around stealing GUN's goodies," Rouge said, smiling a little and Tails again asked himself what about this was funny at all. "Oh, and your goodies, too, Knucky."

"You've no right calling me anything like that and… and… ", Knuckles complained, but to Tails' relief he looked to be in less of a killing mood by now, "… and I saw him!"

"What did you see, Knuckles?", Tails asked. "Are you sure, really sure, it was Sonic?"

"Of course, he was right there, running so fast he was a blur to me, and then he took the Master Emerald, held it over his head and ran off, to the island's edge. I followed him there, but I only saw him jump off the island and then he was suddenly gone!" Knuckles was still overly agitated. Tails could hardly remember a time Knuckles had gestured around _at all_.

The fox sighed. "Fine. How close were you to Sonic? Could you see his face, his eyes, things like that?"

"Uh, no? But it's not that he's easy to confuse. There's only one supersonic blue spiky guy around, right?" Knuckles shot Sonic a death glare.

The hedgehog however seemed much closer to calming down than the echidna. "Oh really? Just think about your story, will ya, Knucklehead? Since when do I carry the Master Emerald? Above my head, even? Do you even realize how _heavy_ that thing is? No? Well, it's _very_ heavy? I can hardly lift it, let alone carry it around." Sonic took a deep breath. "And I ran from you? All the way from the Temple of Chaos to the island's edge? And you could follow me? _Me_? You gotta be kidding. You wouldn't even see the dust in my wake if I _meant_ to run from you."

Knuckles looked about to explode again, so Tails quickly stepped in front of Sonic. They needed to get to the bottom of this, and another fight wouldn't solve anything. Hence, Tails decided to play shield. After all, if he was really to try it, the echidna wouldn't hurt him to hurt Sonic… at least that was what the young fox hoped. "Knuckles, _listen_. Someone's trying to make you and GUN think Sonic stole their stuff. We have to find out who these people are, okay? We will find out who does that, and who stole the Master Emerald from you, but you have to calm down, okay?"

Knuckles ground his teeth. "Okay… For you, Tails."

For a second, Tails felt his chest swell with the notion that Knuckles would step down, now, because of him. It seemed special.

Then the echidna continued and it gave a slight dent to Tails' short moment of awe. "But if this is a trick…" The look Knuckles shot at Sonic was hostile enough further words weren't needed to clarify.

* * *

"Do you want something to drink?"

Knuckles shook his head to Tails' question. The fox shrugged, more to himself than his friend. He was right now content that Knuckles was sitting down on the worn-out sofa in the workshop instead of trying to kill Sonic or something.

"Fine." Tails stood in front of the sofa, leaning over Knuckles' head, trying to clean a few bleeding cuts above his right eyebrow. "Were that spikes?"

Knuckles shrugged. "Don't know. Might as well have been some stones on the ground. But it's hard to dodge Sonic's quills on the long run, even if he doesn't use a spin." He took a pause before adding: "And the things are damn sharp."

"It's kind of the point." Tails smiled a little, not bothering to notice that Knuckles too was spiky in parts.

Knuckles remained silent.

Tails again wiped at the cuts. "But with a bit of work you'll look like new," he said.

It was a plain lie. With Tails' efforts Knuckles looked less dirty and the open cuts and scrapes would soon be neatly covered with band-aid, but that didn't change that he looked as if he'd been in a war.

Sonic didn't look any better off; at the moment he was upstairs being interrogated and patched up by Rouge. The bat and fox had agreed it was a good idea to first of all separate the two, and Tails had volunteered to take care of Knuckles and ask him about all the details, thinking it was better than leaving the echidna in his momentary mood alone with the white bat. It was a known fact Knuckles couldn't really stand her teasing attitude even on a good day, today clearly wasn't a good day, and Tails really didn't need another fight.

Half an hour later Tails sat next to an increasingly quiet echidna on the sofa. He'd told Knuckles in all details what he knew about what was going on – what wasn't much, admittedly – and he'd let Knuckles retell his day. Twice. They'd very thoroughly gone through everything Knuckles had seen and assumed because of it, and the more they talked the more Tails found Knuckles was seeming to shrink on the sofa. As if he meant to burrow into it. He didn't say anything, but something about the echidna looked pitiful. Suddenly he looked down to Tails, down and sad and tired and hurt and ashamed, all at once.

It was an unusual look on proud Knuckles.

Rouge came down the stairs at some point, announcing she'd get back to headquarters and report the events. She said Sonic was fine and for now not a suspect anymore, but the hedgehog stayed upstairs even after she left. Tails knew all the sounds in his house and he could hear him walk around upstairs for a few minutes before he picked up the sounds of metal pods being pulled from the kitchen cupboards and figured the hedgehog was making himself something to eat.

Tails sighed, looking at Knuckles on the sofa again. Not only Sonic was awfully quiet at the moment, and no matter what Rouge had said, the fox wasn't sure if anything would be 'fine' anytime soon.


	5. Hedgehog Morals

After having tried in vain to cheer Knuckles up, Tails decided to try it through distraction. Anything else but reminding him of the crappy day he'd had until now. In lack of something more suitable for it, and after having any offers for food or drinks repeatedly declined, the young fox picked the first best thing at hand – the mess of airplane parts all over his workshop.

He started rebuilding the biplane and while he was at it, he showed the pieces to Knuckles and explained in all detail what they were and what they did in the plane. He doubted Knuckles understood what he said, but he thought the echidna would need to hear and see something different for now. Knuckles didn't complain, he simply sat there slumped on the sofa and replied to questions with one-syllable words.

"This is the propeller shaft…" Tails' voice echoed a little due to him having his head behind the engine cowling. "It distributes the power from the engine to the propeller. It can spin at over 5000 rpm. To withstand the forces caused by this, it needs to be always well-lubricated with a special sort of oil, and it's one of the engine parts that are being cooled if necessary. Unless it's really cold outside of course… Like when I fly up to your island in winter and it's freezing again. You know, we'll have to go sledding down your mountains the next winter, Knuckles. … Knuckles?"

Tails pulled himself out of his plane when no answer, not even the expected non-enthusiastic 'uh-huh', came. The two-tailed fox turned around, just to find the sofa unoccupied. "Knuckles?"

Slowly the fox walked over to the sofa, looking around in the workshop. The doors were closed, but Knuckles was nowhere to be seen. Actually, Tails wasn't even sure how long he was gone… The Master Emerald guardian was good at sneaking around silently.

"Knuckles?!" No answer came and Tails sighed. Just where had the dreadlocked picture of misery gone while he wasn't watching? The fox twirled his tails. "Just hope he doesn't do anything stupid…"

* * *

A thick beam of daylight fell through the small kitchen window. Outside, below the cliff the house sat on, the ocean twinkled in deep sapphire blue and above it, the sky was free of clouds, a wide, endless blanket of cyan.

Sonic smiled a little to himself as he looked away from the window again. He could still take his run later… The day promised to stay the same perfect weather it had already been in the early morning.

The blue hedgehog turned back to the pot in front of him, still absentmindedly stirring the stuff in it. As the wooden spoon slowly circled through it, the chili was starting to give out the smell Sonic loved like no other. He reached to adjust the temperature of the oven, then opened the fridge and took out a glass of sausages. One by one, he let them slip into a second pot, filled with hot water.

"I… didn't know you could cook…"

Sonic had not heard any footsteps and Knuckles' sudden words surprised him. He turned his head, a small smile darting over his face. "Actually, it's about the only thing I can make without burning it." He returned to stirring the chili. "Besides frozen pizza," he added after a moment of silence.

Knuckles didn't comment on the light-hearted statement. Sonic couldn't see him, but he didn't seem to move from his position on the threshold to the small room and almost a minute passed in awkward silence while Sonic felt the echidna's eyes on his back. "We… need to talk," Knuckles said then and his voice was little more than a whisper, hesitant, reluctant, strained and not at all fitting Sonic's picture of his stubborn, hot-tempered friend.

"Okay." The blue hedgehog shrugged a little as he turned around halfway, still stirring his chili, but looking at Knuckles, and the sudden thought that at the moment the echidna was more the _blue_ one of them struck him. It was nothing like Knuckles to talk. _Tails_ talked.

Sonic eyed the echidna, how he stood there still in the doorway as if there was some kind of invisible wall keeping him from coming all the way into the kitchen. He was chewing his bottom lip, his body just like Sonic's own showing definite traces of the fight they'd had, not even a great amount of Tails' first aid equipment had been able to conceal them. The right of his large hands clawed into the wood of the doorframe. Probably he didn't even know Sonic was looking at him, because Knuckles himself was staring at the floor as if the tiling was the most entrancing thing he had ever seen in his life.

_He almost looks like Tails when he was small and broke a glass or a plate and was scared to tell me._ The comparison would have seemed ridiculous to him at any other time, but at the moment it ridiculously _fit_.

"I… I want to…" Knuckles shifted his weight between his feet.

"Say sorry?", Sonic felt compelled to continue the half of a sentence. Given the pure look of guilt all around the echidna, it seemed obvious to him.

"No." Knuckles shook his head, still looking down, the thick, long dreadlock-spines falling over his face. "Nothing I can say will ever be enough to apologize for what I have done."

Sonic cocked an eyebrow. It wasn't like that had been the first little quarrel they had had about a misunderstanding on Knuckles' behalf. Although things like that hadn't happened in quite a while, they weren't too long ago to forget.

"I… called you a traitor," Knuckles said quietly into the silence. "More than that, I thought you were it. I thought… I thought all the things we did together… could have been just show. I thought for all that time you had just acted as my friend and then you had stolen the Master Emerald. I… doubted you. I doubted the friendship we had. The last time I doubted you that easily, I didn't really know you. This time, I should have known better than to believe you to be a thief. But I didn't. I came here, the worst insult there is on my lips, and attacked you. All because of my own failure to do my job and to interprete what I see." He took a shaky breath. "I am a shame of a guardian, and I am a shame of a friend. If we would go by the old law of my tribe, you would have the full right to kill me and I wouldn't resist. Kill me and let me be forgotten."

Sonic blinked, shock slowly working its cold path down his spine. He didn't really mean that, did he? But there he stood, head hung low, shoulders slumped and his hand still interlocked with the doorframe, but by now it seemed more as if he needed it for support. Suddenly Sonic wished in front of him stood just a little kid that had broken a piece of dish and not a teenaged echidna that looked like he was on and about to jump off the cliff behind the house.

"Knuckles?"

For a short second the echidna looked up at him and the cold feeling shot through Sonic again at the look in his eyes. Surrender. Defeat. Shame. He would have never expected to see either of those in the dark violet of Knuckles' eyes. Then he looked down again and the hedgehog was almost glad.

Sonic took a slow breath. A joke and a light comment wouldn't bring him out of this situation. _Why me?_ First, he had to serve as a bad excuse for Knuckles not owning a punching bag, and now this.

For a moment he studied Knuckles, casting about for something remotely intelligent to say to talk the red idiot out of his weird sense of honour and morals and that stuff.

"You're right," he said slowly. He paused, but Knuckles didn't look up at him, and Sonic continued. "I don't give a damn about your tribe and their laws."

Knuckles didn't say anything, nor did he move, and Sonic stopped stirring the chili. He turned off the oven, leaning against it, arms folding on his chest.

"You know what I thought when I first met you?", he asked.

The echidna shook his head.

"I though that red guy is an idiot, an asshole, an enemy and probably a lot of other things," Sonic continued. "I was proven wrong on all of these things but one. Sometimes you really are an idiot."

Had the hedgehog hoped to get the usual reaction of anger out of Knuckles, he was disappointed. Knuckles was silent.

"Maybe it really comes with your weird job." Sonic tipped his head to the side, watching the echidna. "That you're so suspicious. You fell for Eggman a few times and you see traitors and Emerald thieves and people abusing any trust you might give them behind every rock and every bush and every tree on your island. Or on this planet."

The hedgehog sighed. "The world isn't full of Eggmen, y'know? I don't want you to trust and like everybody you meet. Nobody does that and it'd maybe really make you a bad guardian. But you aren't. It's the end result that counts and so far you always got your Emerald back and in one piece. That makes you much more successful than Eggman, 'cause he's always screwed in the end of something, and you are fine in the end of something. So, on my terms, that means you're a good guardian." At any other time the hedgehog would have added a 'relatively', served with a grin and wink. Now, he held his tongue against it.

Knuckles was still chewing his lip and Sonic wasn't sure if anything he said was useful to cheer someone up.

"So much to that." Sonic sighed again. He hated speeches, he really did. The only few people he knew that enjoyed long monologues were Eggman talking about how brilliant his latest failure of a plan was and Tails in a fit of exited technobabble. Sonic himself didn't enjoy being the only one to talk when there was more than one person around, but at the moment the other person in, or rather half in the room was as talkative as the oven he was currently leaned against.

"How many of my friends do you know, Knuckles?"

The red echidna shrugged. _Hey, a reaction at least…_

"Well, there is Tails. He's more than a friend to me; he's my little bro. And like all little bros he sometimes gets on my nerves. When he was smaller, there were moments when I wanted to put him into some cupboard and leave him there for a while. Today, sometimes he talks more to his machines down in the workshop than to me, and if he talks to me he quite often talks _about_ his machines down in the workshop. Still, I know the little guy loves me and I love him.

"Then there's Blaze, a princess from a different dimension who thought she didn't need any friends at all. In that part, the two of you are pretty alike actually. She's always serious and hardly makes any jokes. The complete opposite of me, I guess…

"Amy's sometimes too much of an annoyance. There were times when I really thought I should spindash her, just so she can't run after me anymore. It's no fun being chased when you're tired after some sort of massive fight with giant evil monsters. But anyway, even if she's an annoying girl with an even more annoying crush on me, she's still a good friend… In a weird kinda way sometimes.

"Shadow isn't anything like a friend, neither are most of the other guys I know.

"And then there's you. The stubborn red echidna that lives on a flying island, isn't exactly a conversationalist, takes a lot of things too seriously, cares about his giant glowing stone more than about most people he knows, has quite a bad temper at times and lives according to weird, outdated morals.

"And I myself am a speed junkie that runs around saving the world from freaks like Eggman, but actually enjoys it. I need the thrill, the adrenaline, the adventure. I always take things easy and don't plan my actions. Probably I'm not really the showcase hero either."

Sonic made a pause, finally, breathing in and out a few times, still watching Knuckles. "You're probably wondering why I tell you these weird things about all these people. I tell you because in a way we're all the same. We're people. And people make mistakes. A lot of things all of us did would have been easier if we wouldn't make the mistakes typical for us. If Amy wouldn't scream so much and run around wielding that hammer, if Tails would explain his inventions in a way _anyone_ else could understand half of what he says, if I would start making a plan before doing something, if you would be a little less the _proud,_ " he couldn't reign in the breath of sarcasm now, "guardian from the lonesome island. But you know what? I wouldn't want that. I like my life, and I like my friends. Just the way they are."

The blue hedgehog's eyes wandered over Knuckles, trying to find out if anything of the fuss he was talking here was showing _some_ sort of effect. But the echidna was still looking down, the tip of his right foot drawing over the floor.

"No, I am not going to kill you, or do anything else you probably expected me to do for whatever weird reasons. It's enough work _talking_ so much…" Sonic huffed out another sigh. "Knuckles, most of the people I know and even call friends have tried to kill me at least once. When we met, or at some other time. Don't know if your morals know the concept, but I don't care much for what someone did in the past. Clear the argument, say sorry in some kind of way and be friends again. That's how _hedgehog_ morals work, I guess. So, the two of us had an argument, a neat little fight outside and now you're saying sorry and we eat some lunch together."

He took another deep breath looking at his friend's slumped shoulders. "And please, stop looking like a sheepish five-year-old."

Knuckles looked up at him, suddenly confusion written in his eyes. "I look like what?"

Sonic shrugged. "Like Tails when he was small and did something he thought would make me mad at him."

Knuckles stared, blinked, and shook his head. "Oh." His hand finally left the doorframe to rub the back of his head.

Sonic mentally kicked himself for not saying the thing about five-year-olds earlier… It would have probably spared him a lot of useless talk, and an embarrassed Knuckles was much easier to deal with than a guilty feeling one. It was a lot less out of character.

"It's really… that easy for you?", Knuckles asked into the short moment of silence.

"Yeah, I guess. I'm an easy hedgehog. Easy is more fun, you know?" Sonic smiled a little. "Do me a favor and be a little more easy as well, huh?"

Knuckles actually nodded. "I'll try." He hesitantly smiled as well.

"Fine. And don't forget what I told ya, took me a lot of hard thinking…"

Again Knuckles' hand rubbed over the backside of his head. "I'm afraid I have already forgotten some things out of it. Too much talking at once. It's like when Tails talks and…"

Sonic laughed at the look on the echidna's face. "I get it. Don't you ever force me into doing a Tails and talking my own ears off again, okay? I need them, or I'll look like you."

The echidna's face was crossed with a short grin that actually reached his eyes for a little moment, but then he nodded firmly. "I won't. Promise."

"Good. Now say sorry and we're friends again and can get to the part with the peace-making snack." Sonic grinned back at him.

"Uh, okay… Sorry." Embarrassment was back on Knuckles' face in an instant, and for that instant he did look like the five-year-old again. Suddenly Sonic wondered what five-year-old Knuckles might have been like. Gullible, probably.

Sonic was still grinning, forcing himself not to follow the train of thought any further. "See? That wasn't too hard now, was it? Next time, we'll just handle things that way directly. Less stressful and stuff."

"Okay…" Knuckles smiled sheepishly.

Sonic turned around to the oven again. The chili had stopped smelling and also the water with the sausages wasn't exactly boiling anymore. "Damnit. Now my lunch is cold."

"It's not that warmth would make the stuff much more edible," Knuckles noticed, stepping to Sonic's side and throwing a look into the pots, the usual dry tone slowly working its way back into his voice and Sonic was incredibly glad to hear it.

"You don't have any good taste, grapes-eater," he said, playfully elbowing the echidna. "Get some fruits. Peace-making or not, I won't share my wonderful chili dogs with someone as blasphemous as you."

Knuckles chuckled and Sonic sighed inwardly. _Normality. Thank Chaos. Now we just need to track down the Emerald thief. It'll be just like always._ A smile darted over the hedgehog's face. They could do that. _  
_


	6. Tails Analyses

"Knuckles?!" Tails slowly ascended the stairs to the upper floor from the hangar. He'd failed to find the echidna outside and hoped the fact that he'd been unable to see him anywhere, not even in the distance, meant he was still here. If Knuckles meant to run off on his own – and he did have a tendency to do so – Tails knew there was no stopping him. When Knuckles put something in his thick head, he didn't back away from it or waited for someone else to follow him for assistance. That was, in spite of all the differences between the two, something he had in common with a certain blue hedgehog he knew…

"Knuckles?" The two-tailed fox got no reply as he stepped into the small corridor, but his ears picked up to the unexpected sounds of laughing. Following it, Tails covered the few meters that separated him from the living room door and poked his head through the opening.

He found Sonic and Knuckles sitting surprisingly peacefully next to each other on the sofa, the echidna's right hand holding what was probably an apple and Sonic keeping a plate with about a third of a chili dog in front of him. The hedgehog wasn't eating though, he chuckled while Knuckles spoke.

"- and then we got into this weird old pyramid Eggman used as a base," the red echidna was saying. "And then we found that plane thingy and you insisted it's a great idea we take it to go to space. Seriously Sonic, do you always take a ride in something you find in your enemy's base? In a construction of Dr. Eggman's no less? We all know how great these things work…"

"Hey, what's your problem with it?" Sonic laughed heartily. "It was working out just great – until you went crazy and snatched the controls from Tails and me. Really, whatever gave you the idea to _ram_ a _space_ _station_ , Knux?"

"The Master Emerald was on there!", the echidna justified himself.

"And that's a reason for about everything, sure." Sonic's pointed ears twitched in amusement.

"It was – a shortcut! I just took the quickest way in! I always thought you had something for quick things." Knuckles grinned, elbowing the hedgehog.

Sonic cried out, jumping. "Hey, what was that for?!"

"Aw, does it hurt?", Knuckles mocked, grin still on his face.

"Heck it does! Seriously, were you trying to break my ribs back there?"

"Yes."

Sonic blinked. "Like… really?"

The guardian shrugged. "Yes?"

"Y'know, there's something like being _too_ honest," Sonic noticed, for a moment almost glaring at the echidna, then a grin wiped it off his face and he slapped Knuckles playfully across the head.

"Hey!" Now Knuckles glared. "Why'd you do that?!"

Sonic was still grinning broadly. "Just to make sure we're even," he remarked.

Knuckles stared. Sonic stared back. They remained frozen like that for two, three, four seconds, then simultaneously raised a finger to point at the other. "You're stupid!"

Tails bit his lip to keep from laughing at the involuntary chorus, watching his friends. Again, they were staring at each other, seeming surprised, then Sonic burst out laughing, dropping against the back of the couch. For another moment Knuckles stared at him as if dumbfounded, then he started to chuckle rather idiotically as well.

Tails decided to make his presence known now that the atmosphere was relaxed like that. He stepped into the room. "Ah, there you are!"

"Tails!" Sonic waved at seeing him. "Come on and join us! We're having lunch and trade memories. It's fun in a bun!"

The fox nodded, walking up to the armchair next to the couch and slouching into it. "So, I figure you've made peace?"

Sonic looked over at Knuckles who was still trying to stop giggling. "I guess, yup. After we cleared I didn't nab his Emerald, everything turned out fine."

Knuckles sobered at the mention of his lost gemstone. "Talking of the Emerald, I really gotta go. Thanks for the food and stuff, but there's an Emerald thief I gotta catch." He nodded at the two others in what was probably meant as a brief goodbye and stood to leave.

Sonic snatched his arm, stopping him before he had a chance to walk away. "I'm coming with you," he announced.

Knuckles turned around, frowning. "This is none of your business, Sonic."

"Well, since apparently _I_ stole it, it very much is my business," the hedgehog remarked slyly.

Knuckles grimaced and for a moment it was clear to Tails that while the worst was over, Knuckles wasn't quite done with the earlier events yet. "That… wasn't fair," the echidna mumbled.

"Do you even have a plan, Knuckles?", Tails asked. Back to facts was always a good thing to do, especially with Knuckles.

The red echidna turned to him, almost looking surprised at the question. "I'll track down the thief, kick their arse and take the Emerald back to the island," he said then.

"That… could almost work." Sonic grinned, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Let's do it!"

"Guys!" Tails quickly moved to jump in their way before they both could run off. "Wouldn't it be better to first think through who and what we're up against? Decide where we're looking?"

Sonic blinked. "Uh, do you have an idea, little bro?"

"Not yet, but I know how to give us one." Tails smiled. "Everybody, follow me!"

* * *

Sonic looked over Tails' shoulder at the computer screen in the workshop. Next to him, Knuckles stood with his arms folded. It was clear the echidna wasn't so sure what to make of Tails' idea.

"Now where is it?", he asked impatiently.

Sonic swallowed a chuckle that wanted to come up at that. While he had to admit usually _he_ was the impatient one, whenever his Emerald was at stake Knuckles did his best to rival him at it.

"We're almost ready to start, Knuckles," Tails said soothingly, typing a few commands into his keyboard that caused the screen to show the image of planet Mobius, gently rotating in front of the pitch black of space. Tails turned around. "Okay. Knuckles, I need you to tell me where Angel Island was this morning when the Master Emerald was stolen."

Knuckles shrugged a little. "I'm not exactly sure, I'm afraid. Over Emerald Ocean?"

"Okay then…" Tails frowned a little, just that frown that told Sonic his mental gears were spinning hard and quickly. "Where did it fall?"

"A couple miles out of Windy Valley," Knuckles answered, grimacing. Sonic knew he hated the idea of his island being grounded. Of course, considering it was a _floating_ island, that made kind of sense.

"Hm." The little fox still looked thoughtful. "I guess we can assume it didn't cover a great distance during the fall… I think it'll be enough for an estimate, anyway." He turned around, fingers dancing over the keys again. The virtual picture of the planet span quickly around until the Mystic Ruins and the continent they lay on filled the middle of the screen. It had barely reached that position and stilled there when from somewhere in the depths of black around it a large, bright red flag shot towards it and embedded its base in the blue water shortly east of Windy Valley.

"Whoa…" Knuckles stared, amethyst eyes wide. "How'd you do that?"

Sonic leaned over to him, grinning and adapting an ominous tone. "Maaaaaagic…"

Knuckles threw him a glare, causing Sonic to duck behind Tails to dodge the imaginary daggers flying from the violet eyes.

Tails rolled his eyes, but otherwise ignored the two. "Fine, this flag marks where Angel Island was. And this –" He typed in a couple more commands, again turning the planet almost halfway around until Empire City became centered on the screen just to be stuck with a flag as well. "And this is Empire City, where one of GUN's headquarters is. According to Rouge, around eleven o'clock in the evening the person they thought was Sonic broke in there."

Sonic had folded his arms, for now deciding to keep from pointing out that people had to be stupid – or really blind. Really, how often had he been confused with someone? But instead of dwelling on it, the hedgehog let his eyes wander over the digital globe in front of them. "That's quite a distance," he noticed.

Tails nodded, leaning over his keyboard to press another button. "It's about 11 thousand kilometers," he announced.

Sonic whistled. "That _really_ is quite a trip."

Tails span around with his desk chair to face the others. "What's really astonishing about it is that the Emerald thief made that trip in about ten hours. That means he must have gone close to speed of sound."

"As it wasn't Sonic... How fast was he?", Knuckles asked.

Tails' namesakes twirled softly. "Well, the speed of sound depends on the temperature and the material you're passing, on the likelihood of the molecules in the atmosphere to hit each other and transport the oscillation, and the higher the temperature is the quicker these molecules move on their own and propagation of sound waves is easier. That –"

"Tails?", Sonic interrupted, trying to give his overeager little brother a clue nobody had asked about a scientific explanation of the concept of sonic speed. "How fast?"

"1200 kilometers per hour, approximately. That means, if our thief traveled at sonic speed it'd give him only an hour spare to do something like disposing of the things he stole before he got to Knuckles' island." Tails shrugged. "If that was needed, maybe the stuff could be easily stored. Unlike the Master Emerald, it would probably fit into a small pocket."

Knuckles turned from looking at the map to Sonic. "Could you do that? I mean, totally rhetorically speaking of course," he quickly added at seeing the hedgehog's frown.

Sonic looked between Knuckles and the screen for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "As much as I hate to say it, I don't think I could."

Knuckles almost fell backwards. "What?! But you're the fastest thing alive!"

A smirk flashed over Sonic's face. "It honors me that you trust in my speed, Knux, but just think about it!" The blue hedgehog pointed his finger at the map. "We're talking about the speed of sound. Everything beyond the sound barrier is like… my absolute top speed. Sprint." He looked at Knuckles. "How long can you sprint, Knux? I mean, sprint as in go as very fast as you can, or close to that."

The echidna rubbed the back of his head. "Close to it… a few minutes I guess. Real top speed… I dunno, half a minute?"

Sonic nodded. "That's it. While we can say my limits when it comes to speed are all considerably higher than yours, it still goes for me as well. I can run higher super sonic speeds, up to Mach 2 or whatever Tails calls it, for maybe a minute if I'm really pushing it. Just past the sound barrier, that means the speed we're talking about… maybe ten minutes. And then I'll either need a bunch of rings, or a ton of sugar, or something like that to refill my drained reserves."

Tails looked between Sonic and Knuckles. "And we're not only talking a short burst of speed. What we calculated as a speed here is an average value. A constant speed throughout the whole 11 thousand kilometers."

Sonic sighed. "It's not only stamina that'll keep me from doing that, it's simply impossible to run that fast constantly even if you don't run out of breath or something."

Knuckles frowned. "Why?"

"Simple. The ground isn't a flat field. There are obstacles. Trees, people that build houses right in your way, mountains, deep pits full of lava, all that jazz." Sonic shrugged lightly. "There are a lot of areas you simply need to pass slower than that if you don't want to kill yourself."

The red echidna raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. "And here I was thinking that's part of your daily business."

Sonic waved his hand at him. "It's part of the fun… but only to a certain extent. I'm still alive 'cause I know where I can risk it and where I can't."

Knuckles looked somewhat taken aback at that and Tails seized the short moment of silence to steer the conversation back on topic. "If even Sonic says he can't run that track, I guess we can safely assume no-one can."

The hedgehog grinned brightly. "Sure as chili dogs. And even if I wanted to run the first part, I'd be stopped there." He pointed at the map. "There's a stupid ocean between these two continents. And I sure as hell don't cross an ocean running."

Knuckles still frowned. "I thought you can run over water."

"Yes, at super sonic speeds." Sonic nodded. "Which I can, as we already noticed, only keep up for a lot shorter times than I'd need to get across this." He leaned in to tap his finger on the blue area on the map.

The red echidna smiled a little. "I get it."

"And that also completely crossed Shadow off our list of suspects," Sonic continued. "Ultimate Lifeform or not, the guy's slower than me. Not much, but slower."

"Maybe there's a way to cross him out anyway," Tails mused, turning to Knuckles. "How did your thief move?"

"What?" The guardian scratched his head, dreadlocked spines ruffling.

"I mean, did he run like Sonic, skate like Shadow…?" While Tails was speaking, Sonic jokingly started moving through the workshop accordingly, though in a sort of slow motion.

Knuckles frowned as he watched the hedgehog's not exactly talented acting. "Actually, it didn't really look like either of that," he said.

Sonic stopped and turned around. "Then what do you want me to do?"

The echidna's chin was cupped in his hand. "Move more… smoothly."

Tails and Sonic exchanged a glance. "More smoothly?", the hedgehog echoed.

"Yes." Knuckles crossed his arms, seeming somewhat sure of his point now. "The thief moved a lot more… in a line. When you're running, you kind of bounce up and down and to the side a little. Skating lets you move sideways in a kind of rhythmic fashion. But the thief was doing neither of that when he ran from me with the Master Emerald."

Sonic blinked, not having expected near as much information at once in a sentence coming from the red echidna. "Uh, fine. Then what do you think it was like?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I dunno, grinding down a rail, maybe. Or, yeah, riding a hover board…?"

"Can those things move so fast?" Sonic turned to Tails.

The young fox chewed his bottom lip. "Maybe if the board is really well tuned…?"

Sonic looked back at Knuckles. "Then… are we looking for an Emerald thief on an invisible Extreme Gear?"

The echidna blinked, trying himself at sarcasm. "Well, at least that'd be a new one."


	7. Emerald Search

"Okay Sonic, hand me the small screwdriver again." Up to his waist under the Tornado's pilot seat, Tails held his right hand up, vaguely aiming for where the hedgehog sat on the wing of the biplane.

Sonic grinned and picked up the tool, placing it in Tails' waiting hand. "Anything else you need?"

For a few seconds Tails didn't reply and Sonic wondered if he'd maybe missed on his words, but then the fox heaved out a sigh and pulled himself out of the weird position he'd been in. His face and arms were streaked with black stains of oil, but he was smiling. "Nope," he finally answered the hedgehog's question. "I'm all done. The Tornado is ready to go again."

"We just need to know _where_ to go," Sonic remarked, hopping off the wing and following Tails when the fox strolled over to the computer at the desk in the corner of the hangar again.

"I was about to get to that." Tails pressed a button, awakening the device from stand-by. He looked around the workshop briefly. "Where's Knuckles?"

Sonic shrugged a little. "I think I saw him go upstairs. Guess he'll be back, probably once he realized you're no longer trying to teach him mechanics." He shot his brother a grin.

Tails didn't return it. "I wasn't! At first, I was only trying to cheer him up. He looked... really down, you know."

"Yeah, I know. He felt..." Sonic hesitated over how to even call Knuckles' mood when he'd come up to the kitchen to talk to him. "He felt guilty for thinking I'd stolen his Emerald," he settled after a moment of thought, unsure what else to call it. "And he thought he'd failed his duty as guardian, but somehow I think it was worse this once that he'd wrongly called me a traitor." It felt odd in a way, now that he reflected on it, that the fact the Emerald was gone had not seemed the worst thing weighing on the echidna's conscience this time.

His hand was still placed next to the keyboard, but Tails wasn't paying attention to the computer anymore. Big blue eyes were focussed on Sonic. "I figured that much. I tried talking to him after I patched him up, but you know him, he's not often all that talkative..."

A wry grin passed over Sonic's face. "Glad I'm not the only one stuck doing a monologue here then."

"You did?" Tails' ears twitched; Sonic wasn't sure if in amusement or bewilderment.

"Yeah. I had to do _something_ , and punching sense into him obviously didn't work." Sonic tried a wink.

It did nothing to fool his younger brother. Tails kept looking at him intently, and Sonic knew he could read him like an open book no matter what he said, or didn't say. And Tails was also the last person Sonic would try hiding anything from, but he felt uncomfortably like betraying rarely given confidences if he shared any details on the moment up in the kitchen even with his little bro.

After a moment of silence, Tails nodded. "Seems like you did not so bad a job at holding a monologue then," he said. "Now we'll just have to find him his Emerald back. I don't like him being all tense like this. He still looks at you all odd."

"He does?" Sonic raised an eyebrow. He hadn't noticed that. Knuckles was always tense when his Emerald was gone...

Tails studied him for a moment. "Yeah. Maybe he still feels bad about suspecting you and expects you to... I dunno." He shrugged. "Be mad, or something."

Sonic shook his head. _Here's hope being mad is the worst thing he expects me to be..._ "I'll have to try extra hard helping him get the shiny rock back then, until he understands I'm not going to be mad," he said carefully.

"I suggest we all do." Tails gave him a smile that was more understanding and reassurance than he could have put into another monologue, then he turned back to the screens that now once again showed a map of sorts, getting back to their plans.

For a moment Sonic watched him work, feeling more at ease than he'd had since his disrupted attempt to buy breakfast in the morning. He hoped Tails knew how awesome he was.

The two-tailed fox continued speaking even while he was typing, tearing Sonic away from his thoughts. "I… kinda hacked a few satellites, connected the readings to that chaos detector over there," he pointed at a small device on the desk, "and programmed a search for the Master Emerald's typical energy outlet. The system won't get us anything accurate, but we'll get a search area. Since we have Knuckles with us and he can find the Emerald by instinct if he's close enough, I guess we can just fly a search pattern until he picks up something."

Sonic grinned at the thought. "Like a walking talking Emerald douce."

Tails briefly looked up at him. "Don't let him hear that."

The blue hedgehog chuckled. "I bet I better don't. It's enough he almost broke my neck this morning…"

"Uh-huh." Tails nodded, but obviously bit down on the comment Sonic had seen flicker over his face for a second there.

On the screen, the chart had zoomed in and a red blinking circle showed around a coastline.

"Where's that?", Sonic asked, leaning closer.

Tails too was reading the map. "The area around the city of _Soleanna_ ," he observed. "Never heard of it. How do you pronounce that? Sole-anna? So-leanna?"

"Not sure, but I guess I ran through there once or twice. They got some really awesome fireworks festival there." Sonic shrugged lightly. "Looks still like a lot of space to search," he noticed.

Tails nodded. "About 200 square kilometers. That's really the closest result I can get, I'm afraid."

"Nah, it should be fine and –" Sonic interrupted himself when the circle marking their search area suddenly decreased in size, steadily shrinking towards its middle until it was only half a big as before.

Tails stared. "What the… There's gotta be some sort of interference…"

"Hey guys, what's up? Something happened?" Chewing on a piece of apple, Knuckles walked up to the others.

"Stop!" Tails waved at the echidna.

Knuckles froze. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know. Could you go back for me?" Tails still stared intently at the screen.

"What?" Knuckles looked dumbfounded. "Am I disrupting some kind of secret you two have there?"

Sonic shrugged. "Trust me, I got no idea what's up…"

"Just go backwards a bit, okay?", Tails urged.

"Alright, if it makes you happy…" The apple half in one hand, Knuckles walked backwards to the other side of the workshop.

"Okay, stop and come back here, but slowly," Tails commanded.

The guardian frowned, but complied.

Sonic looked between him and Tails. "What's wrong, Tails?"

"I'm not sure. It seems as if Knuckles kind of changes the signal." He pointed at the screen. "Look, the closer he comes to the table, the smaller the indicated search area becomes."

Sonic scratched behind his ear. "But that's good, isn't it? If it's smaller, we can find the Emerald faster."

"Yes, but I don't understand what's happening…"

Still a couple meters behind the others, Knuckles was beginning to look irritated. It was a familiar look on his face and Sonic found it almost comforting to see it. "Hey, anyone bothering to tell me what the heck is going on?"

Sonic grinned. "Your being here boosts Tails' Emerald tracking thingy or something."

"What?" Knuckles came over all the way and leaned over Tails shoulder.

"I don't know, Knuckles," Tails started. "You see, I used this to roughly track down the Master Emerald to help us find out where to start looking for it and –"

"One can track down the Master using a simple computer?" Knuckles looked a little shocked now, Sonic found.

"Uh, it's not a simple computer, Knuckles," Tails clarified. "But yes, if you try hard enough you can, not very accurately though, tell where the Master Emerald is. But don't worry, that's normal. It radiates energy and of course one can pick up that energy…"

The red echidna still looked rather unhappy about that.

"But it's really not very helpful, Knux," Sonic soothed. "Look, Tails' search area is 200 square kilometers wide. That's huuuuuuge! Angel Island is a lot smaller than that. So, it's of no use for any Emerald thieves. That it's usually on the island is a known fact anyway."

Knuckles looked a little relieved at that and Tails shot Sonic a thankful look. "But since you're here," the young fox continued, "the readings have gotten more accurate. When you came back into the room, our search area reduced to a half of its original size."

The echidna blinked. "How?"

Tails shook his head. "I don't know. I could imagine your close energetic link to the Master Emerald could work like an amplifier. Or you're like some sort of antenna to the detection device…"

Sonic and Knuckles exchanged a weird look. "Let's just be happy we don't have to search as much places as before," the hedgehog said.

"What do we do now?", Knuckles asked.

"Now," Tails grinned and turned around to the others, "now we take the Tornado and go find your Emerald of course!"

Knuckles smiled and took a bite of his apple, speaking through a mouthful. "That was the best thing you said all day."

Silently, Sonic disagreed. Tails had said nothing but great things today.

* * *

In level flight at just 500 feet altitude, the Tornado was travelling almost parallel to the coastline now. They had flown over the city a few times without much of a result. Since they'd left it behind, instead of houses and streets grassy hills and rocks formed the landscape beneath the biplane's double wings. The coast had a jagged form here, with hundreds of small bays interrupted by the occasional longer stretch of beach. The ocean was an almost unnatural royal blue that turned lighter shades of turquoise just in a very thin line where it met the golden sand of the broad beaches.

Sitting on the left upper wing, Sonic's fingers were firmly locked about its trailing edge. Riding backwards on the plane, the strong winds tugged hard at his quills. The hedgehog gazed at the sea below the wing. It was calm and showed just a very few white crests. In contrast to some other oceans he'd seen, like the really beautiful sea of Adabat for example, the dark colour of the water in spite of its great clarity told him the sea shore fell steeply. Sonic didn't like deep water much. No, he didn't like water much at all. The deeper, the worse…

And yet, in spite of its dread, in spite of the danger and the uncomfortable chill the sight of the ocean sent down his spine, it was beautiful. As long as he didn't need to go into it, Sonic kind of enjoyed looking at the sea.

"Go back around, Tails!" Knuckles' sudden words cutting into the silence, disturbed only by the noise of the plane's propeller, brought Sonic fully back to reality.

"Did you pick something up?", Tails asked, banking the plane into a gentle turn.

"Yes, but we passed it already," Knuckles replied.

"I'm going back," Tails affirmed.

Knuckles merely nodded. Sonic watched his friend. The echidna sat stiffly now, upright and straight, but his eyes were firmly closed. Sonic guessed it was easier to concentrate on the Master Emerald's energy that way. It was like that with the Chaos Emeralds, after all. From all Sonic knew, the differences couldn't be so large.

"Stop, it's getting weaker again," the echidna suddenly said.

Tails frowned. "This is a plane, not a helicopter. We can't just stop. We'd stall. Can you stop when gliding?"

"Then go around again," Knuckles urged, irritation obvious in his tone.

Sonic bit back a chuckle and leaned down a little to look at what was below. There was nothing much that met the eye; just a long, flat beach surrounded by hills and rocks. The waves lazily rolled out on the fine sand, too quiet to hear over the propeller noise. For a moment Sonic thought he'd spotted a building, not much larger than a hut at one end of it, but then they passed it and it vanished under the wing.

"We're past it again," Knuckles noticed.

"How close do you think we are?", Sonic asked. "I can't really see anything down there."

"It's still weak," the echidna explained slowly. "I don't think it's right below us yet."

Again Tails brought the plane around. "I'll bring us a little more inland then. It should be getting stronger."

But they flew past the beach just half a kilometer from the sea without Knuckles picking anything up. Curiously Sonic watched him, the strain that was evident in the tight lines at the corners of his closed eyes. "And? Finding anything?"

"No…" The guardian's voice was quiet.

Sonic and Tails exchanged a look. "I'll fly back to the beach again. Just tell me when it's the strongest, okay?"

"Hmm." Knuckles nodded weakly, too concentrated to really speak.

Sonic's look alternated between his friend and the ground they flew past. They went back over the hills to the spot where they dropped towards the beach.

"It's back," Knuckles said. Tails started to bank into a course parallel to the coast again, but the echidna didn't seem to like it. "No, the direction is good!"

Tails put the wings back into level, looking over his shoulder. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." Knuckles' eyes were still tightly shut.

Sonic twitched his ears, shifting his position a little so he could see where they were going. "But there's nothing but water… You don't think whoever stole it dropped it into the sea, do you?"

Knuckles didn't comment and Tails just shrugged. Uneasily Sonic turned back to look at the water. It was still deep blue, but the vague outlines of underwater rocks you could see through it had changed their shape. They didn't seem as rough anymore here. Almost round instead.

"A little more to the left," Knuckles advised and Tails complied silently this time.

They flew for another few minutes, the beach became harder to spot in the distance, then the echidna finally said something again. "I think we passed it."

"Are we close?", Tails asked, twin namesakes wagging behind him in excitement.

"Still several hundred meters minimum," Knuckles answered, tipping his head aside, listening to something only he could hear. "But we weren't closer anytime before."

"That's great, isn't it?" Tails smiled. "I'll orbit a few times. Maybe that'll help you."

Knuckles nodded distractedly. "Okay."

Sonic stared into the sea while the Tornado flew a wide circle, then another one. The hedgehog strained his eyes to see though the water. The Master Emerald was glowing… would you be able to see it? He didn't know how deep the water was here. It sure looked pretty deep… Maybe the glow couldn't reach the surface. "And? What do you think?", he asked after the third full circle.

Knuckles shrugged a little. "It doesn't really get stronger anymore. We're somewhere above it, but we can't seem to get any closer no matter where Tails flies…" Finally he opened his eyes, leaning out of his seat to look down the side of the plane. For a few seconds he said nothing at all, then he slowly looked up at the others. "Do you think it fell into the water?"

"I don't know. Maybe the thief got a submarine or something," Tails threw in.

"Uh-huh…" Sonic numbly gazed into the water. "How deep do you think it is here?"

"I'll do another 360 and run a scan," the fox replied, pressing some of the numerous buttons on the biplane's dashboard.

"It doesn't matter. I have to get it back," Knuckles said, also looking down again.

Sonic warily gazed at him. "What do you plan to do? Jump down and dive?"

"Unlike you, I can dive," the echidna gave back, but it didn't sound much like an insult, more like a simple statement.

Sonic grimaced and let it pass silently. For almost a minute everyone was quiet. "Maybe we can rent a boat and diving gear for you at the city," the hedgehog trailed then.

Knuckles looked up at him in disbelief. "You'd get on a boat to help pick the Master Emerald up?"

Sonic shrugged awkwardly. "Uh, I wouldn't like doing it much, but yeah I would. I promised I'd help you."

Another two, three seconds passed with Knuckles staring at the hedgehog as if he didn't know what to say to that, then Tails broke the silence. "Guys? I don't think we'll need a boat. Or any diving gear, for that matter."

"What?" Sonic blinked. He knew he looked stupid now.

"The sea's roughly 500 meters deep here. It'd be too deep for scuba diving anyway. We'd need a submarine." Tails shook his head. "But that's not all. I think we can get the Emerald back without getting wet at all."

Sonic and Knuckles exchanged a blank look. "What?", the hedgehog repeated himself.

Tails didn't look at him. He still stared at the small screen that announced the results of the scan. "There's a building down there."

Sonic felt his jaw drop and he needed a second of effort to force it close again. "A building? Like in… a house?"

"I don't think 'house' is the right term…" Tails shook his head slowly. "Whatever it is, it's huge. There are cupolas, a hundred meters in diameter, connected though large tubes along the sea bed. It's like an underwater space station or something… It's amazing. Whoever built this thing… they had really advanced technology…"

"Yeah, like Eggman." Knuckles' dry remark seemed to put a small dent on Tails' fascination.

"You think he's behind this?"

The echidna shrugged. "Isn't he _always_ behind something like this?"

"He's got a point," Sonic agreed. "Eggman always builds weird stuff… and I can see him stealing Emeralds. That's not a first either. No idea how he managed to look like me, though…"

"He probably manipulated the cameras or something," Tails suggested. "It's not so hard, really."

Knuckles didn't appear too interesting in Eggman or Sonic's mysterious imposter at the moment. "How do we get inside that underwater base or whatever it really is?"

"I don't know, but there has to be some sort of exit." Tails turned the plane around. "We'll fly back towards the coast and check out how far this building goes. Maybe it hits land somewhere."

Sonic nodded a little. Even if it did… he didn't like the idea of going into something that was underwater. Under a lot of water, even. What if there was a leak somewhere and it got flooded while they were in there searching for the Master Emerald? They'd all be doomed. They'd drown! They –

The hedgehog forced himself to take a slow breath. _Calm down, Sonic. Whoever built this base thing certainly made sure it's safe. Anything else would be stupid. If you build a space station you also make sure everything's properly sealed and you don't get sucked into space. If you build an underwater station, you make sure you don't drown in your sleep. Yeah, it's just like a space station. As long as you stay inside, you're fine._

Sonic chewed his lip, trying to force himself to believe it.

"We're lucky!", Tails suddenly exclaimed. "There's a long tunnel leading right up towards the beach. I think there have to be more exits. The constructor had to make sure you can still get in and out in case one tunnel collapses or something and you have to seal it."

 _See, Tails also thinks it's safe._ Sonic fought a grimace. _Sure, it's perfectly safe. Just don't get sealed somewhere…  
_

"Sonic? You okay?" Tails' blue eyes met the hedgehog's greens.

Sonic shrugged, forcing on a smile. "Yeah, great."

"It's okay if you don't like underwater tunnels and bases," Tails said and Sonic uncomfortably shifted his weight when he found himself so easily sussed out. "We'll look out for you down there. Right Knuckles?"

Even the echidna nodded a little. "Yeah, sure."

"See? It's alright." Tails smiled up at him.

Hesitantly Sonic smiled back, but for real this time. At least he wasn't alone… although he was a little surprised when the mocking comments about his fear of water from Knuckles' direction didn't come. Maybe the echidna was too busy thinking Master Emerald to bother teasing him…

"The tunnel seems to end right at the beach," Tails informed the others. "Check out this small building over there. I guess it could be the way in."

Knuckles leaned out of the plane to see it himself. "Looks more like some hut."

"Maybe that's just a disguise. We'll land and check it out, okay?" Receiving a nod, Tails reduced the Tornado' speed and lined up for a landing on the sand. It was flat and firm enough under the tires. The wheels touched down softly and the biplane rolled out across the beach until stopping at the end of it. Tails turned it around so it could easily start again later and shut down the engine.

Knuckles was the first to hop down. He shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun with one hand as he gazed towards the other side of the beach where the small hut or whatever it really was sat between rocks. "Are we ready to check it out?", he asked somewhat urgently.

Tails jumped off the plane as well. "Sure!"

Reluctantly Sonic followed his friends and they strolled over the beach. The small hut, though it looked wooden, revealed itself to be made of metal with a thick layer of paint from a close look. Its door opened easily, but behind it they encountered a second door, one that looked at lot more like high-tech base than the cover outside.

For a few seconds Tails fiddled with a control panel that sat on the wall next to it, then the door slid open with the soft buzz most automatic, sealing door gave out. Behind it, bathed in a green-tinted light, lay a long corridor with walls, floor and ceiling all metallic.

"Voilá!" Tails gestured inside. "Here we go."

Knuckles smirked. "Good job, Tails."

The young fox beamed at the rare praise. "Do we go in?"

Following the others, Sonic listened to the quiet clanks his footsteps caused on the floor. Knowing he'd just get himself into a silly panic, he did his best to distract himself from the knowledge the father they went the more water was all around this small tunnel. Dark, cold, wet water… Water you could drown in…

He forcefully shook his head, spines rattling against one another with the movement. This was leading him nowhere.

The hedgehog twitched his ears. Aside of their audible footsteps, this place was strangely quiet. It wasn't all uncomfortable. Something about the green and bluish lighting was peaceful. The tunnel was leading downwards at a gentle slope and in soft turns. Every few hundred meters an automated thick door like the first one separated one part of the tunnel to the next. Probably the safety seals Tails had mentioned.

Sonic looked around. So far they had met no resistance, no robots, no automatic guns, no spike traps. The walls showed installations he recognized as outlets for laser fences, but none of them were active. Right now, this place seemed pretty much dead and deserted.

"Do you really think Eggman built this?", Tails asked after long minutes of quiet walking.

Sonic shook his head. "I dunno." His voice echoed a little from the blank walls around. "It's not really his colour scheme. And there are no robots, and no Eggman logos everywhere."

"Maybe that comes later," Knuckles remarked. "But no matter who built all of this, we're on the right way."

"Well, that's good I guess," Sonic allowed. He had to admit as the minutes ticked by eventlessly, he was starting to feel almost safe around here. He almost forgot they even were underwater.

After ten minutes, they reached the first dome. A huge, spherical room dressed in pale bluish metal. Three other corridors continued from here. The three friends stood in the middle of it for a while, taking everything in.

"Where do we go now?", Tails asked. "This place is so big…"

Knuckles pointed. "This way."

Sonic smirked. "You sure?"

The echidna shrugged. "Yeah?"

"Well, let's go. We better find your Emerald and get out of here again before someone comes home," the blue hedgehog pointed out. No matter how deserted the place looked to him, he couldn't fight the feeling that something was wrong. No traps, no laser fences, no robots.

This was way too easy. And with places like this, easy was never any good.


	8. Hedgehog in the Mousetrap

From the center of the base, Metal Sonic wirelessly accessed the surveillance cameras of the base. It allowed him to watch his enemies arrive without having to bother to move from his position yet. Apparently, the hedgehog and his companions had found the entrance easily and were now following the long track down to the main parts of Aquatic Base.

His optics not leaving the screen and still watching the enemies like a hawk hovering over its prey, he opened a detailed map of the base from his memory, laying out the way he would leave open for the trio to take that would eventually lead them to a room was various little generators. They were leftovers of the base's previous owners, of no use to him and not required for the base's operation. But with the robots he had sent down there, those useless generators, together with the bomb conveniently placed at a sensitive spot of one specimen, would serve as an ideal distraction. All he had to do was waiting for the hedgehog to stand in the right position. His allies would be distracted and capturing his dreaded nemesis would be easy.

Metal Sonic reached for the gun on the table next to him. As tempting as it might be, he didn't strive to get into any confrontation with his biological copy. His personal desires to beat him into a bloody pulp had to stand back for the greater plan. In the end, the result wouldn't be much of a difference. He would get rid of Sonic for good, and the way he'd planned out now was quick and fail-proof.

One claw holding the gun, the robot pulled out a dart, turning it over in front of his optics. The thin glass tube of the tiny arrow was filled to the brim with a cocktail of substances with strong tranquilizing effects on biological creatures. After studying his worst opponent for a very long time, Metal Sonic had worked out all unique traits about the hedgehog's anatomy, and one of those traits was the fast working of his metabolism. Metal Sonic had calculated his arch-enemy's body would consume the drugs much quicker than most other creatures, leading his systems to react even stronger to them. It pleased Metal to know that if the hedgehog would ever awaken from the sedation, he would be feeling very miserable for a considerable length of time. But, as his plans went, it would not come to this, for Sonic would not leave this base again.

Metal Sonic returned his attention to the cameras. The intruders were a good way down towards the set trap. Most satisfactory. The robots shouldered the gun and threw just a short look at the Master Emerald. When he was done with Sonic, he wouldn't need the gem anymore. He would allow the enemies to find it and take it back to the floating island. For him, that was the best way to quickly get them out of the base again. Without knowing it, all three were working right into his hands.

* * *

Sonic held his head tipped backwards as he walked, staring at a large number of round… things. They were about the size of a football, consisted of some sort of silvery metal stuff… and they floated. This was already the second room they passed that had the ball things and still Sonic could only stare at them. Tails had touched one in the first room, although mostly on accident at first, and it had turned out the balls were a little like bubbles, light and cool to the touch, but apparently harmless. And you could home-attack them. What was somewhat useless, but funny and interesting.

Next to the hedgehog, Tails was busy talking Knuckles' non-visible ears off in his attempts explaining what the balls were and how they worked or what they could probably be good for. From all Sonic perceived, the echidna still found the things anything but suspicious and didn't give a damn what they were in detail. All Knuckles cared about was getting a hold of the Master Emerald. Not that anything about this situation really surprised Sonic.

The hedgehog returned his attention to the floating balls again. Something about them… heck, something about this whole place was giving him deja-vú. In a weird kind of sense he was sure he'd seen this stuff before. The high round rooms, the corridors, the floaty balls. Something about them rang bells in his head, but he couldn't get a grip on it. There was something about them, but this was as close as he got to it.

He's made a comment about it already, but Knuckles didn't seem to care, busy trying to locate the Master Emerald's direction, and Tails thought that they'd been to so many places that looked somehow like this (all of Eggman's bases, Space Colony Ark…) that it wasn't too surprising Sonic felt that way. The blue hedgehog shrugged. Maybe Tails had a point.

After all, something about this place and the way it felt remotely familiar had taken away most of the nervousness, and wondering about the balls and other things he saw occupied him enough to help shove the fear of being crushed under an ocean full of water in some mental corner where it wasn't effecting him too much.

And the ball thingies were funny. Sonic poked one that was in reach that gently bubbled out of its position, collided with another one, causing both of them to bounce off each other and float into several others. Sonic grinned. He liked the balls. He wanted one of those for home. It'd be fun chasing it all around. He made a comment about it, but Knuckles downright ignored him and Tails just smiled.

The hedgehog's contemplations on taking one of the things with him when they left again were interrupted when they got out of the bubble room and into another large dome. Like in the others of its kind, three new paths generated from here and Sonic was beginning to wonder just how big this underwater base was. And if they hadn't already gotten lost in it.

As a clear difference to earlier domes, this new one wasn't empty though. In the middle of it there was a group of what looked like gas canisters to Sonic, large yellow things, connected to some sort of machine that gave out a soft, deep humming. It was the first piece of actual machinery they'd found.

"This looks like some sort of generator," Tails said, slowly walking up to examine it more closely.

"Is it important we look at it?", Knuckles asked, irritation obvious in his tone again. "The Master Emerald is somewhere nearby."

"We're close finally?" Sonic eyed the echidna.

Knuckles nodded. "A little closer and it's gonna burn my nerves…"

The hedgehog frowned. "And that's good?" It sounded kind of painful to Sonic...

"Yes?" Now Knuckles looked surprised.

Sonic shrugged. "If you say so."

"Uh, guys?", Tails interrupted the awkward conversation. "I'm afraid I got some bad news…"

"Like what, little bro?" A second later, after looking around, Sonic could have spared his breath. "Robots!"

"They must be here to guard the Master," Knuckles remarked, his amethyst eye narrowing. "I won't let them stand in my way!"

Sonic exchanged a glance with Tails when the echidna readily threw himself at the nearest group of machines. Usually it was Sonic who jumped first before looking around… but it was Emerald searching time and Sonic idly noticed that Knuckles had to leave his brains at home when on a quest for the thing. Or all this energy he said was burning around here made him high. Or something like that.

Forcing himself to try being more thoughtful for once than his red friend, Sonic took in their opponents. No idea how they'd managed to appear all over the room without anyone noticing. But that was one thing most bots were uncomfortably good at. Appearing out of nowhere and opening fire at you. Which was pretty much what they were doing.

Jumping out of the way of a handful of tiny rockets and grabbing Tails by the arm as he went, Sonic made for closer to the generator thing. Hopefully the robots considered in sensitive and didn't shoot at it. Having gained a few important seconds, the hedgehog cast a look around. There were about thirty or forty Egg Pawns, a common type that came in many variations, a few other smaller models with rocket launchers, one of them just about to get its head ripped off by a red echidna angry about the delay it and its companions caused with his Emerald search, as well as six giant robots with large hammers. Aside of their dark blue color instead of the usual reddish tones and the hammer instead of a gun or laser weapon, this type looked a lot like the others… just that it was four times larger and very tough to kill.

Sonic frowned a little. Getting rid of the bots would take precious time… "Tails? Do you think you know where we came from?"

"Yes, sure." The two-tailed fox nodded. "Why?"

"We've been really running a zigzag course on our way here. If we find the Emerald and Eggman or someone turns up with more robots, we better get outta here quick." He shot another look at Knuckles. "He wouldn't want to risk the Emerald in a fight."

Tails nodded again. "It's his mission this time, I guess. So you want me to find a quicker exit? You'll be okay on your own?"

Sonic grinned. "Sure. They're just a bunch of robots. It'll be fun!"

Tails laughed. "Whatever you say. I'll be back with the plan for the best way outta here before you're finished with those guys. Wanna bet?"

"You're on." Sonic gave his brother a thumbs-up, turned around and took a dash for the first best robots near to him. He jumped into the air when he was almost in reach of them, spinning into a spiky ball and homing in on the first in line.

With Sonic and Knuckles tearing through their formation from two sides the death toll among the machines was rapidly increasing. Sonic took out one of the giant bots by running around it at high speeds until it became confused enough to fall over in a futile attempt to hit him with its hammer. The few seconds it lay on the ground struggling were enough for Sonic to jump high over it and bound down on its head heavily.

Sonic simply ran over some of the smaller bots, the protective shield of wind and maybe chaos energy making the collision harmless for him but not so for the robots that were catapulted into some of their own kind, increasing Sonic's non-accounted-for score. He home attacked a few more machines, easily dodging their laser fire and found with a quick look around that Knuckles was doing equally awesome and had already taken down two of the giants.

That was until some of the remaining robots suddenly turned suicidal and started firing at the generator instead of the attackers. Sonic brought down a few of them, but the yellow canister things showed deep dents and sparks danced over the machine.

"Not good…", Sonic nervously mumbled to himself and in an act of clever gut instinct and long-time experience with situations like this one turned away from the dying generator. "Look out, Knux! This thing's gonna go boom!", he shouted, jumping over the fallen body of a giant robot in his way.

He didn't get a chance to look what Knuckles was doing. An enormous bang sounded from behind and the shockwave caught him still in midair, barreling him forwards like a spiked cannonball. His stiffened his quills, pointing outwards like blades and shivering softly under the strain, protected most of his body from harm; just his left side, unfortunately pointing in the direction of the blow and not properly shielded by his spikes, all of a sudden felt as if a hundred of needles was being driven into his shoulder and side by the force of the explosion. Sonic knew he'd cried out, but the sound of pain was short-lived when he collided with a hard wall. The impact knocked the wind out of him and he dropped down, his body half uncurling as it went limp.

His head was pounding, his shoulder stung and the blue hedgehog thought he felt warm blood ooze into his fur. He forced his eyes open when he found he'd squeezed them shut at some point and crawled up until he sat with his back against the wall, trying to regain his bearings. The wall was metal, possibly the only thing separating him from the vast ocean, but it was cool in his back. For a moment Sonic relaxed against it, deliberately taking slow breaths, trying to wash a bit of the adrenaline out of his systems.

He was slowly beginning to get a grip on himself when he felt a short sting on the side of his neck. He reached out for it, but his hand never got to feel it. A weird, numb feeling was spreading from his neck, Sonic felt like he was suddenly sitting on a spinning plate, then the room tilted to the side and a dark fog fell over it. He was unconscious before he even understood what was going on.

* * *

Knuckles was in the middle of a punch when the explosion went off. He heard Sonic scream a warning and turned his head towards the hedgehog's voice, his right fist not stopping its way directly into the robot's metal visage.

The clanking sound when the bot fell over almost coincided with the flash of bright light from one of the things Tails had called generators. Knuckles shielded his eyes with his arm and although he was on the other side of a rather large room, the shockwave that hit him a second later made him tumble several meters backwards until he tripped over the remains of a broken robot and fell ungracefully onto his tail.

Squinting through a light haze, Knuckles could only sit and watch a ball of blue being shot through half of the room by the force of the explosion, through an open door into a corridor and out of sight. "Sonic!"

The echidna scrambled to his feet and was about to dash for the door to check if his friend was okay, but three of the large hammer wielding robots still remained and didn't seem bothered by the explosion much. Of course, Knuckles mused acidly, there were definite upsides to weighing a hundred times as much as Sonic or himself. What sent a Mobian flying was probably a mere breeze for a giant robot…

Knuckles jumped to the side and shook off his pondering when the robot nearest to him swung its hammer. It crashed into the ground only a meter to Knuckles' left, shaking the floor enough to make it difficult for the echidna to remain on his feet. He ground his teeth. "Get outta my way!"

Spiked fists raised, he charged forwards. Two long steps brought him close enough to the robot and he jumped upwards, striking one tightly clenched fist at its hammer arm. He hit right onto the elbow, causing a satisfactory twist in the arm and the hammer dropped to the ground. Now it was more obstacle than weapon to the robot. A dead weight restraining it, and Knuckles knew that. He planned on taking advantage of it.

Another light-footed jump brought the echidna even closer to the robot. He timed his steps and set his right foot onto the robot's knee, using it as a step to hurl himself upwards. With his hands on the robot's shoulder, it took only a second for the guardian to crouch next to the machine's head. He knew from experience it was the most sensitive part and raised his right hand, bringing it down onto the metal skull in one of the mightiest punches he could master.

The result was just as expected and very satisfactory for Knuckles. Sparks flew from where he's punched a remarkable dent into the robot's head, the combat machine swayed back and forth as if drunk, then dropped forwards like a felled tree and hit the floor face first. Knuckles jumped off its shoulders before it met the ground, launching himself at the next robots.

If their programming allowed them to actually understand what had happened to their companion, Knuckles didn't know, but the remaining two seemed intend on staying together. Oh well. Knuckles approached them from the front, moving quickly and not in a straight line. It was a tactic he'd adopted from Sonic, not that he'd ever admit something like that. But moving fast and in a somewhat random pattern apparently made it hard for most robots to aim at you, or even understand what you were up to.

When the two hammer bots caught up on Knuckles' plan, he was already in the midst of them, standing on the small space between the towering machines. There was another thing Knuckles knew about the giant hammer robots. Striking a small opponent directly to their feet wasn't what they were good at. The hammer was only good at a range of more than two meters away from the robot; if you stood directly on their toes, they had no real way to harm you.

Knowing that and feeling relatively safe, Knuckles started his destructive work on the first robot, trusting in the second one not to blow its hammer at him to avoid hitting its buddy. He seemed to be right on that. Hopping around between the robot's feet, he scored punch after punch until his spiked namesakes tore through the armour and punctured the interior of the machine. He quickly withdrew his hand when tiny bolts of lightening danced around the hole he'd made. The giant robot swayed and threatened to fall onto him, but Knuckles gave it a hard push that upset its balance completely and caused it to fall onto its back with an ear-shattering boom.

Knuckles was about to turn around and handle the last robot when a feeling he'd never felt before shot through his body and he stood frozen. Deep in the back of his mind, the Master Emerald had cried out, an energy surge so piercing it caused Knuckles' entire body to quiver. He gasped. "No…" Truth was, he had no idea what was happening to the Emerald. But it was bad.

He shook himself. He had to get to the Master. Quickly. Still gasping, the guardian bounded over the fallen robot, too concentrated to be aware that the sudden movement had most likely saved his life when the robot behind him brought its hammer down onto where a second ago the red echidna had been standing. But with Knuckles gone, it only shook the ground and the machine was left staring after the opponent it had meant to smash. It wasn't fast enough to follow quickly, and the dead body of its fallen companion blocked the way.

Knuckles didn't waste a single thought on the robot anymore. He dashed towards the door at the far end of the room. The one Sonic had been flying through, too. The echidna rushed into the corridor, finding it angled a ninety degree just ten meters from the door. Knuckles continued onwards. "Sonic!?"

He didn't get any replies. The corridor was empty. Knuckles briefly examined the wall. There were a few red stains on it that could be blood, but Sonic wasn't around. If he could run off, he'd be fine, Knuckles reasoned, and he had to get to the Master Emerald. The energy patters it gave out felt crazy.

Breaking into a run again, Knuckles ventured deeper into the base. Suddenly he knew exactly where to go.


	9. Only One Sonic

Metal Sonic strode through the portal into the Emerald laboratory, his right claw locked around the ankle of his nemesis. The blue hedgehog's body dragged over the plain floor, his quills a mess and his arms and second leg limp. He was unconscious for now, and even in the unlikely case he should be aroused from the sedation, the drugs would still wreck enough havoc on his systems to incapacitate him for another 24 hours during which he wouldn't function properly. Metal had made sure he would be no threat to him this time. He'd learned to be careful.

Dropping the dead weight in front of the control panel, Metal didn't waste any sensory capacity on the hedgehog. It seemed almost ridiculous to him how easily the hardware of a biological creature could be manipulated through the use of simple chemicals injected into its fuel lines. Another reason that made his design the superior one.

The blue robot activated the machine, his secondary processing unit again checking the Master Emerald's energy patterns. The outflow was beginning to rise and change in frequency as his controlling machine began drawing power from the crystal.

Grabbing the despised hedgehog around the waist, Metal Sonic lifted the unresponsive body and hosted him up onto the table-like panel of the power transmitting device. For a second he looked at the spiky lump, triumph beginning to register in the circuiting of his AI, then he returned to the controls to initiate the process.

Once it had started, the robot stood back, all sensory alert. He was, as close as robots can get to it, curious what was going to happen, if it would work as he had calculated, what it would be like. He had read about it, in ancient scrolls of the echidna culture as much as in his creator's recordings, but making it happen for real was outstanding. He was the first to activate the process in thousands of years, and the first to do through the use of technology. He was a great chaos controller to master this feat, a lot greater than the hedgehog and his echidna associate combined. He was –

Metal Sonic's fit of ego was interrupted when the energy readings reached the calculated peak level. The radiation was so intense it interfered heavily with his optical sensory. All Metal could see was the brightest green light covering his nemesis' body, consuming it. It lasted for almost ten seconds before subsiding. As the energy level dropped to what Metal Sonic supposed was its idle condition, the transmitter panel was empty.

If Metal Sonic had been a living creature like his creator, he would have laughed hysterically now. Since he wasn't, he stood still as before, but satisfaction was racing through his algorithms. There was only one Sonic anymore.

Him.

* * *

His feet gave metallic echoes on the floor as he was running. Knuckles' eyes lay fixed to the end of the corridor. There was a door and he could tell without needing to open it the Master Emerald was behind it.

The weird outputs of energy had ceased and left just a slight disturbance behind. Whatever had been done to the powerful gem, it had stopped, and Knuckles was decided to prevent it from ever starting again.

Like many others in this weird underwater base, the door slid open automatically as he approached it and he entered another wide, round hall. The walls, floor and ceiling were the same pale silvery blue like the rest of the base, and yet the colouring in this room was different. An emerald green glow hung over the room, emitting from the center of the room.

The look of his precious gemstone almost physically hurt Knuckles. It was strapped to a bizarre sort of machine, numerous wires leading to computers grouped around it. It was glowing, the pulsing of its energy still slightly erratic.

Knuckles dashed the last meters towards it. He didn't spent much time to look at the machines around. For a second he favoured the idea of smashing them all, then common sense kicked in and told him he should better see he got out of here with the Emerald before he was caught and the Emerald endangered yet again.

That decision made, he unhooked the gem from the abusing machinery and lifted it up with both hands, securely holding it over his head. Then he dashed for the exit. He'd wait for the others where they'd left the biplane.

Knuckles was fast, given he was carrying a giant crystal easily more than three times his weight, but he wanted it safe as soon as possible. The echidna was running upwards a green-tinted tunnel, wondering how he'd get from here to the tunnel the three of them had come down on arrival, when he rounded a corner and almost crashed into Tails.

"Eep!", the fox shrieked in surprise, jumping out of the way.

Knuckles was doing his best to keep the large Emerald balanced overhead after dodging his suddenly appeared friend. "Tails!"

"Knuckles!" The two-tailed fox rightened himself much more quickly than the echidna, double tails balancing him out swiftly and elegantly. "Hey, you found the Emerald!"

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah."

"Did you catch the thief?" Now Tails' twin namesakes twirled excitedly. His arms were slung around one of the bubble-like ball things as if he wanted to hug it.

Knuckles frowned. "Nope, there was no-one there when I found the Emerald. It was connected to some sort of machine and –"

"What machine?", Tails interrupted curiously.

The echidna softly shook his head. "Heck, Tails, I don't know. To me, all large glowing machines look the same. Large, glowy, and machine-y, and I don't give a damn what it does. I snatched the Emerald and thought it was best to get it out of there first and wonder about stuff later."

Tails grinned. "I guess that wasn't such a bad idea. In fact, I was on my way back to the Tornado as well. I found a shortcut, I think. Now that you've got the Emerald I think we need one. We don't want to risk losing it again." He looked around, finally seeming to notice the missing third team member. "Where's Sonic?"

"Dunno. I lost him in some kind of big, round room with a bunch of robots in it. We were fighting and something blew up." Knuckles shrugged a little, as much as the heavy Emerald in his hands would allow. "I thought I'd seen him, but he was gone by the time I got there. He wasn't in the room with the Emerald either. Maybe he saw the thief and is chasing him down."

"Uh-huh." Tails nodded. "Sounds like something he'll do."

"I guess it's best we wait for him at the plane," Knuckles suggested. "Sonic can take care of himself." He indicated the ball. "He'll be happy you brought one of those," he noticed with a tiny smile.

The fox giggled. "Yeah. I guess after he had to get into this watery place, he deserves playing with it. And if I'm honest, I'd like to do some research on its properties."

"Uh… Maybe you should do that before you give it to him. Hedgehog has got a tendency to break his toys." Knuckles grinned. Having the Master Emerald back, even though still far from the island and without having gotten a hold of the thief, was doing wonders for his mood.

Tails laughed. "I'll think about it."

"You better do." Knuckles shifted the heavy Emerald in his hands and started towards the exit again. "You coming, Tails?"

Tails nodded again and the two continued uphill until they reached the door and stepped outside of the little building onto the white sand of the beach. Knuckles looked back to the house briefly. Nothing about it betrayed just a bit of the vast underwater maze it led to.

The echidna was pulled out of his thoughts when Tails shouted. "Hey, look! There he is!"

Knuckles turned his head. At the end of the flat, sandy beach sat the Tornado, still in place where they'd left it, and in the back seat, waving at them, was Sonic. Knuckles grinned and shook his head. _I worry about you and you beat me here easily_ … "Fastest thing alive."

Tails giggled lightly. "I've known him for so long and it never ceases to amaze me."

"I know what you mean." Knuckles followed when Tails strolled towards the plane. Stopping next to it, he looked up at the blue hedgehog. "Hey, Sonic. Everything cool?"

"Yup." The hedgehog gave a thumbs-up. "What took you so long?"

Knuckles laughed and nodded towards the Emerald. "That."

"Then we have what we came for, right Knuckles?" Sonic leaned back in the seat. "Let's get home."

Tails held the ball out at the hedgehog. "Look what I got us!"

Sonic stared at it for a moment and smiled a little. "Great, Tails."

The fox blinked. "Do you want to have it? Or should I put it into the cargo space so we don't risk dropping it?"

"Just store it or something." Sonic looked away again.

What had happened to his enthusiasm about the floating bubbles? Knuckles and Tails exchanged a short, slightly worried look, then the fox placed the ball into the cargo hold in the biplane's rear and tailicoptered into the cockpit, and Knuckles hosted the Master Emerald onto the wing before climbing after it. When he safely got into position with the big gem, the echidna turned over his shoulder. Sonic was looking out the side of the plane.

Head titled, Knuckles studied him thoroughly. From just looking at him, he seemed unharmed. Yeah, even the bruises and scrapes he'd gained in the fight in the morning seemed to have vanished. Rings? Must have been a good deal of them to undo the damage Knuckles' fists had inflicted, after several hours no less. Rings worked a lot better instantaneously. Healing an already existing injury with them wasn't usually very effective. But Sonic was known to be a fast healer, and very good at collecting the golden rounds of chaos energy. What irked Knuckles wasn't his appearance but his behavior.

Sonic was sitting in the backseat? On purpose? He let Knuckles ride on the Tornado's wing? That was Sonic's favorite place and usually it needed a lot of persuasion to get him off it. And he'd said 'home'. To Sonic, that word didn't have much meaning normally. He also didn't seem interesting in the mysterious balls he'd loved so much even on first sight anymore at all. Then, he'd called him by his full name. It wasn't that he never did that, but usually just when he was being somewhat serious. At the end of a mission, Sonic used to make jokes and be in a kind of happy mood, and that included calling Knuckles either by the familiar, short 'Knux' or give a comment about the echidna being late and say 'Knucklehead' got lost on the way back. Or something like that.

Today, Sonic was quietly looking at the sand next to the plane's wheels. No mentioning of parties to celebrate the recovery of the Emerald, or just the team's general awesomeness. No mentioning of the amount of chili dogs he planned on putting down later. And no mentioning of the giant killer robots he'd epically dismantled.

Sonic was quiet.

Something was wrong.


	10. The Void

For some reason, he was falling. He didn't know since when. He didn't know where he was, or where he'd been before. For all Sonic knew, he could have always been falling.

It was dark. No matter how much he strained his eyes, he couldn't see his nose, or his hands when he held them in front of his face. Wherever here was, it was the darkest place he had ever been in.

It was silent, too. No sound at all reached his ears. You should hear the air going past you when you were falling like that, shouldn't you?

The fall was long, dragging through eternity in a way that Sonic forgot he was falling in the first place. The feeling of air rushing past him and this light, distinct feeling of falling free faded from his awareness after a while. He could as well have been floating freely through space.

The difference between floating and falling became uncomfortably aware to him again when the pitch black around him was penetrated by a soft gloom from somewhere in the distance beneath him, and suddenly the hedgehog noticed it was closing in on him.

Closing in very fast.

 _Uh oh_ , he thought. _I'm gonna be hedgehog pancake…_ He looked around hasitly, but there was just the black velvet all around him… and the light of the, well, he supposed it would be ground below. In a last resort and finding nothing better to do, Sonic tucked into a tight ball. In some distant corner he knew it would be useless to save him from a fall so far down it felt infinite, but for some reason, he found himself not scared of dying. Mildly worried, but in an oddly detached way, he felt safe.

It made no sense.

He was cut off contemplating the oddities of the situation and his seemingly inappropriate reactions to it when he hit what he had assumed was ground at the tips of his feet, rolled over his knees and head, then the spikes on his head and backside, then his feet again. He bounced off the ground slightly as he went. Apparently it wasn't a very hard floor. _Lucky me,_ he thought in relief. He remained balled up nonetheless until he stopped moving and ended up lying on his side.

For a moment he just stayed like that, glad to be still alive and in one piece in spite of having not really thought he would die. There had been times in his life where he'd not expected to come out alive, but strangely, this one was not among them.

Nevertheless, he mentally checked himself over for injuries before he dared to move, but nothing hurt at all and something about that fact wasn't as reassuring as you'd think it would be. Something about it made no sense. Something from the back of his mind told him he should hurt… somewhere, and not from falling from who knows where. A ghosting brush of memory, but it stayed unintelligible.

Uncurling and sitting up, the hedgehog looked around a first time. The ground he'd landed on was a sort of mint green and it was glowing faintly. Sonic ran his fingers over it, trying to ascertain it was real. The strange floor was rather soft to the touch, like some kind of foamed plastic. Glowing foamed plastic.

 _Weird_ , Sonic thought, turning his attention from the ground to what else was there. Just that there was nothing aside of himself. The strange floor lost itself in the distance where it was swallowed up by the same pitch black that was everywhere above him. Where he'd apparently come from. But…how'd he come to be in an all dark place?

Sonic unconsciously rubbed his head as he tried to remember. What had he done before he'd fallen through this endless black space to land here? He couldn't keep from thinking he'd forgotten something. Something important. A picture flashed in his head. Knuckles. In a base of some sort. Eggman's? He didn't know. The Master Emerald! They'd been searching for the Master Emerald! And there had been – an explosion? And he'd… crashed against a wall? He wasn't sure anymore. _Did I pass out or something?_ He didn't know and it didn't make sense. Nothing made sense, and the repetitive notion of it was starting to already get on his nerves.

_Wait. Explosion. I don't hear anything at all!_

Sonic had been in explosions before. Quite a lot even. He knew a good blast could impair your hearing, at least temporarily. All you'd hear would be a terribly annoying ringing in the ears. But he didn't even hear that and for a moment he was afraid that he'd maybe ruptured his eardrums. _Am I deaf?_

"Uh, hello?", he asked into the silence around him. His voice sounded dull and weird when he spoke the words, as if the darkness around was swallowing them up. _But not deaf. Good._

Sonic crawled to his feet. He hesitated a moment, then put his hands around his mouth. "HELLO-OH?! SOMEONE HERE?!"

"HERE? HERE? Here? Here? Here? _Here?..._ "

"Whoa, echo!" Sonic stood in surprise.

"Echo, echo, echo…", it sounded back out of the blackness.

Sonic chuckled. "That's kinda cool," he said, though not as loud as before and apparently too quiet to cause another echo.

But where did the echo come from in the first place? For all Sonic knew, echoes were caused by the sound being reflected by a wall or something. Like the light in a mirror. Tails would surely be able to explain it to him better… Tails. Where's Tails? And Knuckles? Had they landed in this weird place too?

"TAAAAIIIIIIILS? KNUUUUUUUUUUUX? ARE YOU THERE?"

"-OU THERE? –OU THERE? –ou there? –ou there? –ou there? …" Only the echo replied.

"Shut up," Sonic mumbled. He had to find his friends, and quickly. He didn't know why, but it was important he got out of here and found them. Really important.

* * *

Angel Island's forests were a sight to behold, especially if seen from above. All the way from where they started to where they ended in the high mountains of the island's center, the leaves shimmered in thousands of colors, ranging from the stubborn bright greens of summer of the few trees that still managed to ignore the change of seasons over light greens and golden orange hues to the occasional deep red. The wind was brushing through them, turning the treetops of the forests into waving, colorful oceans all over the hills.

Knuckles smiled a little. It wasn't often he saw his home from this perspective. The first time, he'd been almost speechless. It was one thing looking over the island from the highest of its own summits. Flying over it in a plane was something different, and although he'd by now seen the island from this perspective a few times already, it still stuck Knuckles how small it looked. Almost fragile. And yet, no matter how often he saw it, he couldn't get enough of the sight. It was beautiful. Right now it lay in the sea like a colorful gem. The light of a slowly but steadily setting sun behind it only added to the impression. The red-tinted beams combined with a light haze over the island and sea around it made it look as if it was glowing a warm shine.

The ever prominent sound of the propeller reduced a little in pitch and loudness and the biplane slowly began a gentle descent towards Angel Island's ground. "Where do you want us to put you down?", Tails asked from behind Knuckles.

Still crouched on the wing, one hand keeping the Master Emerald steady, Knuckles turned over his shoulder. "If it's not too much trouble I'd prefer somewhere close to the temple."

Tails smiled. "No trouble at all. The meadow in front of it is easily long enough, especially since it's not so warm today."

Knuckles frowned, for a moment tempted to ask what the temperature had to do with that, but then he realized he would likely not understand the answer and settle for a short "Good" instead.

When unlike expected the third passenger of the biplane didn't ask about it either, nor made a wise-crack comment about Knuckles being too lazy to walk or something like that, the echidna looked over at the hedgehog. Sonic sat still in the rear seat, currently staring at the island ahead. Or maybe he wasn't staring at the island but more like through it. He hardly even blinked. Knuckles shrugged to himself. Probably had something on his mind. He should be glad Sonic wasn't annoying him with silly attempts at conversation for once, shouldn't he? Instead, the unfamiliar silence made him feel weird.

The treetops closed in rapidly and after crossing a forest at low altitude, Tails brought the Tornado down on the grass. The wheels gave out a soft thump when they touched down and the biplane bounced slightly on the uneven ground, but quickly slowed down and to a stop almost directly in front of the Temple of Chaos.

Knuckles smiled at Tails, standing up on the wing. "Right on spot," he allowed. "Thanks for the lift, Tails."

"Hehe, anytime again." The two-tailed fox giggled lightly.

Knuckles gave him another nod and picked up the Master Emerald, climbing off the twin wings. Once down, he rested the large gem carefully onto the grass and turned back to the plane. "Uh, before you leave… I just wanted to say thanks. Not only for the ride, but… you know. I wouldn't have asked for your help."

Tails winked. "We know that. You never ask. You're Knuckles. And we'd be lousy friends if we wouldn't be with you anyway."

The echidna felt an awkward smile tug on his lips. "Perhaps."

Tails pointed at the Master Emerald. "You'll be alright?"

"Yeah, I can take it from here." Knuckles nodded.

"Sure you can." Sonic finally looked down to him, but the smart remarks he usually spouted in situations like this didn't come and Knuckles surprisingly found himself missing them. A tired Sonic wasn't as fun to be around…

The guardian smiled up at the hedgehog anyway. "Thanks for your help, too. I… am somewhat aware that base wasn't one of your favorite places."

Sonic shrugged a little. "It's fine."

Knuckles nodded and turned back to Tails. "It's just stupid we didn't manage to catch the thief."

"We'll have a lookout," the fox said. "Maybe Rouge found out something while we were gone. Maybe I'll call her tomorrow. You just be careful."

Knuckles firmly inclined his head. "You bet I will. I'll raise the island and move it out as far as I can over the sea. It'll be harder for anyone to reach it that way. I have to keep the Emerald safe... although I'd love to give that thief a proper rematch."

"Yeah. In either case, look out. I'll call you in case I find out something, or we catch the thief, or something." Tails started turning the plane around.

Stepping a few steps away from the Tornado, Knuckles watched the procedure. "Good. You know where to find me."

Tails laughed. "Sure we do." He waved. "See you around, Knuckles!"

Sonic waved as well. "Bye!"

The guardian returned the gesture as the plane gathered speed and lifted off the grass. It cleared the first trees easily and after gaining some more altitude, Tails circled once over the clearing, waving goodbye. Knuckles stood and watched until his friends disappeared from sight, then he picked up the Master Emerald and slowly began to climb up the long stairway to the top of the altar.

As usually the Emerald sank smoothly into the dent in the rock of the shrine, soundless and light. The Master's glow gave out one strong, bright pulse as it touched down and a wave of energy rolled over the guardian's senses. He couldn't help but smile.

Knuckles stood at the Emerald's side for minutes, one hand on its surface, feeling its energy field spread into the island's ground. He waited patiently until the outlet reduced to its normal value before beginning to tap into the power and initiating a slow ascent. The speed increased after the whole socket of Angel Island came free of the water and its drag, and half an hour later it had achieved a stable altitude and was slowly drifting away from the land.

Finally pulling his hand away from the green jewel, Knuckles smelled the air. There was no place with a smell like the floating island. For a moment he stood, taking it in, then he turned his attention back on the gemstone. The field's frequency was still a little off, most likely courtesy of being misplaced and its energy being abused, but it wasn't off enough to be worried for the island's safety. As far as Knuckles knew from former experiences, it would settle after a while.

After a last look at the Master Emerald, the guardian slowly walked down the stairs. There was a lot on the island he needed to check up on.

* * *

The ground was spinning beneath him. It was the only thing Sonic could tell for sure about what was going on. It had started so slowly and gradually he had not even noticed it at first. It was only when the turning of the floor he stood on became so fast and changed direction so suddenly that he started to tumble that he realized what was happening. Or rather, that something was happening.

Sonic yelped as the ground shifted a rapid ninety degrees, arms spreading out for balance. He almost fell to the side nonetheless, stumbled forwards in attempts to keep from tripping and staggered into a kind of big, blue orb. It looked a little like a water balloon and just like one it popped when Sonic's weight half dropped over it.

Instead of the bang he would have expected, the popping was soundless in itself, but it released a good dozen of shiny, golden rings that scattered on the greenish floor around the hedgehog.

Feet slightly apart and fighting for balance, Sonic stared around. The blue ball or orb or balloon he'd destroyed on accident wasn't the only one of its kind. They seemed to be everywhere around. There were red ones, too.

Just where did those things come from so suddenly? _Is this… a special zone?_

Sonic smirked at the idea. It fit. The special zones where weird places. Tails claimed they were a kind of subspace, a dimension between dimensions, a space between the normal universe and the hyperspace it existed within… or something like that. Sonic wasn't too sure on the exact wording his young friend had used. All Sonic knew was that Special Zones were places with high residual chaos energy, or strong chaos fields as Knuckles would probably explain it. As that, they attracted the Chaos Emeralds, especially after they had been used and their powers were weakened. Like magnets of sorts. Sonic remembered Knuckles having once spoken of his ancestors having believed the special zones were the source of the golden rings and used to stabilize the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic wasn't too sure if he believed that.

Anyway, he had been to special stages before. They were weird, surreal places, full of oddities and devoid of what laws of nature you could usually rely on. And with that, the place he was in now perfectly fit the picture.

Sonic grinned. At least now he knew where he was. And while he didn't know how he'd landed here, if he wasn't mistaken, he knew how to get out. It was something he had discovered by chance after landing in the first special zone he'd been too. If you collected a certain amount of rings or, if rings weren't there, colorful glowy ball things, you were flung out of the special zone back to the place you came from. Sometimes a Chaos Emerald would appear right before that happened and you had to be fast enough to snatch it.

While Sonic had been pondering his situation, the rings he'd knocked out of the blue ball had disappeared from sight, but that hardly mattered. Trying his best to maneuver in a straight line, Sonic set off for the next blue orbs in reach. If he collected enough rings, he should get out of here again.

Doing so was easier said than done. The floor was going crazy and Sonic was tumbling around like drunk. He fell over at a particularly sudden shifting of the ground and scrambled on on his hands and knees to pick up the rings the last orb he'd smashed had dropped.

Why can't the damn floor just hold still for once? The hedgehog grimaced as he picked himself up, on by now wobbly knees stumbling in a direction he thought would bring him to the next blue ball full of rings.

Again the floor shifted, and instead of walking into the blue ball he'd aimed for, Sonic was flung to the side into a red one. It exploded with a soundless bang that in spite of the silence made his ears ring and blasted him a couple meters through the air.

Painfully Sonic crawled back to his feet, holding his head. Around him, the rings he'd dropped bounced softly up and down a few times before turning more and more transparent and disappearing from sight, but the hedgehog missed the chance to recollect them. He was dizzy, and noticed a second too late that the shifting, spinning floor was carrying him into yet another red ball. He dodged with a jump forwards and grazed by the ball with just the tip of a headquill.

In spite of quills being dead tissue actually, the involuntary contact hurt more than the first time. There were no rings to scatter anywhere to take the hit and Sonic dropped to the floor again, feeling like he'd just been electrocuted. He hunkered and watched through squinting, disbelieving eyes how the balls, red and blue alike, disappeared suddenly – and then the floor disappeared. In the same second, Sonic lost contact to it and felt like he was accelerated towards the non-existent ceiling. It totally felt like falling free again… Just that he was falling _upwards_.

The hedgehog decided that this was a great moment to start screaming.


	11. Under Cover

A shudder ran through the Tornado as its propeller stopped spinning. Tails eased all levers that weren't already there into idle position and stood from his seat. He stretched briefly, then turned around to his brother. "There we are!"

Sonic nodded. "Good."

Tails frowned at him. _'Good'? Boy, Sonic really isn't well right now…_ "You sure you're okay?"

The hedgehog nodded again. "Sure. I'm just sort of tired."

"Uh-huh…" Tails hopped down from the plane. "Come on, let's go upstairs." Sonic followed without comment as Tails climbed the stairs. He stopped at the end of the treads, turning to the hedgehog again. "How about some chili dogs?"

Sonic shook his head. "I'm not hungry right now."

Tails arched an eyebrow. "Oh. I can make something for ya later then. Maybe after you had a nap?"

"That sounds good." Sonic gave another small nod and started off towards the right.

"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Tails stared at the hedgehog when Sonic turned around. "Your room's that way?" The fox pointed.

"Oh, yeah, right…" Sonic smiled a little and strolled past Tails.

The fox quickly joined his side and opened the door to his room for him. "Here. Are you sure you're feeling okay?" Maybe he'd hit his head and had a concussion? Tails had never really seen him suffer much ill effects from hitting his head against anything, no matter how sturdy or heavy or fast-moving, but maybe there was a first for all? A headache would explain the tiredness and lack of motivation to talk, Tails supposed.

"Yes." Sonic walked over to the large sofa and dropped into it so heavily it gave out a sound Tails had never thought it could until now.

The two-tailed kid watched his older friend stretch out on the couch. "Uh, I'm sure you'll be better after some rest. If you need me, you know, just shout."

"Okay." Sprawled on his sofa, Sonic didn't move.

Worriedly Tails looked at him for a moment. "Sleep tight then," he said quietly and closed the door as he walked out.

* * *

The moment the door shut behind the fox, Metal Sonic was up again. He concentrated his audio sensors towards the doorway, but the soft footfalls of the creature were leaving and for now the robot was sure he'd had some time before he would be back.

The robot stood up, not bothering to de-camouflage himself. His head turned slowly as his optics scanned the surroundings in morbid fascination. So, this was where his biological counterpart lived when he wasn't roaming the world. Metal stood quietly, absorbing the impressions into his databanks.

This room was nothing like his creator's bases, or his newly overtaken own base. The ceiling pitched at an angle of 37,89 degrees. A single window let light fall into the room; simple double glass that wouldn't provide the least bit of resistance to any explosions, bullets or high temperatures. Aside of a low energetic bulb lamp at the top of the ceiling, the room was almost empty of technology. There was a device connected to a pair of loudspeakers, a simple non-precision clock lacking five minutes, ten seconds and thirty-four microseconds behind his internal clock, and a powered-down Extreme Gear hover board leaning in a corner.

Metal Sonic turned around. Behind him was only the sofa or bed. Biological units, inferior to his own design, required long periods of rest to recharge their energies. Metal Sonic did not need such a thing as sleep.

The blue robot walked through the room cautiously, making sure he didn't make any sounds that would get the fox's attention. It wasn't too easy to march the room without stepping on anything; the floor was littered with various objects, not all of them could be quickly identified by his scanners.

Leaning down, Metal picked up a round, flat object. The silvery side of it revealed itself to be a rather primitive storage device, filled with binary data. Metal Sonic scanned it in, but the data didn't seem to be anything useful and his set the disc back down onto the floor where he'd found it.  
Further scanning of the things on the floor turned up that most of them were pieces of clothing. Metal Sonic picked up a pair of gloves and slipped them over his clawed hands. He looked at the fabric closely. Of course, his hands didn't need protection like those of a biological unit did. Heat, cold or forces did not harm his metal armor as easily as the skin of a weak biological lifeform. But for now his mission was stealth and if he had to touch the fox the gloves would just add to the optical disguise his holograms provided.

As it seemed, the fox creature had not seen through his disguise, but while Metal Sonic's databanks contained detailed information files about his biological copy's fighting and running abilities and also some communication patterns he had recorded during earlier encounters, the data told little about the social interactions between lifeforms. For now it was best he tried to keep out of interactions with the fox unit, until he had completely scouted the location. Then, he strived to find out what benefits his loathsome counterpart got out of the company of the fox creature. The fox was what he was here for ultimately, and the fox would be very useful to him.

Metal Sonic finished his examination of the room with the wooden cupboard that stood against a wall. Blessed with built-in x-ray scanners, he didn't need to bother opening the doors. Just looking at the cupboard he discarded its contents as more useless junk. Apparently biologicals collected all sorts of objects the possession of which would help them with nothing. It was illogical and pathetic.

Still standing in front of the cupboard, Metal's optics fixed on its doors instead of what was behind them. Several rectangular pieces of cellulose were taped to it and Metal Sonic noticed the biological hedgehog had failed to set up any of them in clean ninety degree angles. Everything was asymmetric and unorderly.

The pieces of paper showed colorful images of the blue hedgehog and his associates. On hover boards, at a beach, in their aircraft, in front of the Master Emerald. The largest image in the center depicted the blue hedgehog in middle of the fox and echidna, all three grinning at the camera that had recorded the photo. Metal Sonic's optics bore into the face of the hedgehog and his claws fisted as the hatred he felt for him flooded his circuits. He restrained himself with the reminder that he had gotten rid of his foe for all eternity. Before anybody knew of it, he would have taken his place. It had already begun. And as soon as the fox was his as well, he'd get access to more power than the universe had seen in all its time of existence.

Metal Sonic nodded to himself and started to turn away from the photo, but stopped halfway. No, he could not stand to look at this grin!

When the laser gun in his torso ceased to fire, the detested look of his arch-enemy's face had been reduced to a circular burn mark.


	12. Shrouded Blue

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH – Oomph!" Sonic's scream stopped only because he dropped onto something and it totally startled him that suddenly there was floor again. It was tilted rather steeply and with the momentum of the fall, Sonic slithered down like you would move down a slide. When he finally came to a stop, he flopped onto his back, arms and legs spread out, closed his eyes and decided to wait until he figured out if he was still in one piece.

Right now, he was more dizzy than he remembered being in his whole life. Usually, it was very hard to get Sonic dizzy. After all, he took spindashes and all sorts of quick and sharp turns in stride. But falling _upwards_ for who knows how far was enough in its utter surreality on its own, and then this tumble head over heels and sliding down something at high speed had done it.

Now that he lay still though, with a firm, securing pull of gravity keeping him on the cool, smooth floor, his head stopped spinning rather quickly enough. Seemed at least his head was still pretty intact all things considered. Smoothing a hand through his quills and wondering again why he hadn't broken a thing, Sonic sat up. He was, admittedly, quite talented at surviving falls even sane person would think lethal or at least very dangerous, but that didn't keep common sense from telling him he should be dead, or at least hurt somewhere. He didn't.

The first thing after recovering was the natural look upwards, just to see how far he had fallen. But above him was a ceiling of sorts.

Still sitting in the ground, the hedgehog stared around. He was in some kind of tube, a really big, round tunnel. The ceiling was probably seven or eight meters high. Well, technically it wasn't a ceiling but part of the perfectly round wall of the tunnel tube thing.

And everything was colorful. The wall, floor, the whole tube appeared to be made of glass. About half a meter below it (or above it, depending on what part of the tube wall you looked at) something bluish green was shifting and rolling in what appeared to be waves.

Sonic turned around, finding he'd been sliding down this same tunnel. It was impossible to say where he had actually come from before without trying to go back up the tunnel, and he didn't really see a reason or feel a strong enough wish to return to where he'd come from. From here, he could only see how the tunnel was winding in wide turns and wherever he had fallen from was behind the next few turns.

The hedgehog looked back down the slope. As far as he could see, the tunnel stayed the same width, the floor gently tilting downhill. At the beginning of the next lazy turn to the left, two lines of colorful balls floated slightly above the ground.

Finally picking himself up, Sonic began jogging towards them. He stopped when he came close. He'd seen this before, the long tunnels with the waving stuff around and the colorful balls everywhere. It was also a sort of Special Zone, the same sort he'd been to with Knuckles and Tails. It was one of the more simple ones. Blast down the tube, collect a lot of the balls and you'd either find an exit or a Chaos Emerald and an exit. Sonic didn't really care which one he found. Exit alone would be perfectly fine. He wanted out of this crazy place.

Still, he could enjoy himself while he was here, right? An almost endless space to run on wasn't something he encountered often after all. With a grin on his face he started running, blazed into the first of the balls and followed their lines down the tunnel, going as fast as he could. At first, it was really fun and he collected felt thousands of balls, but then they became less and instead explosive mines appeared on the track.

Sonic remembered those too. Tails had run into on the first time they'd encountered them and from then on been a little scared to repeat the mistake and delay them too much. Sonic had told him to jump over them or fly and it had helped in the end. Knuckles mockingly joked Sonic would make a good motivation trainer.

The hedgehog dodged a mine field and launched himself at another long row of balls that followed it at, still going at high speed. This place sure brought back memories… and while it is fun running here, it was a lot more fun with the others. Sonic frowned. He wasn't gone near long enough to actually miss his friends, but he was worried about them.

The last thing he remembered before landing in this crazy Special Zone place was being in that underwater base, searching for the Master Emerald. He didn't know how he'd gotten here. Had Knuckles found his Emerald alright? Did they catch the thief? Or did they land in this crazy place too and were just like he was trying to find their way out? Where they still together? Sonic wouldn't want Tails to be alone in a weird place like this. What if they still were in that base searching for him because he'd disappeared? He didn't want them to be worried.

His thoughts were interrupted by another, particularly big field of mines in his way, but he didn't let it become an obstacle. Speeding up, Sonic used his momentum to run up the wall until he was running upside-down on the ceiling. He stayed there just long enough to clear the mines, then jumped, flipped around in mid-air and came down running on the ground again.

 _Well, I just have to find the end of this thing and get back_ , he thought.

A few hours later, he knew that this was easier thought than done. The tunnel seemed endless. He'd been running for hours, yet it never changed, it still sloped gently downwards, still spouted balls and the occasional bomb. Day and night didn't exist in here and Sonic lost track of how long he'd been here already, how long he'd been running.

In the end, he grew increasingly tired and slowed down to a walk again. He kept walking for some time, without reaching anything that would indicate he was coming closer to the exit, then he stopped and sat down on the ground. It wasn't that there was anything more suited to sit on nearby.

Numbly he watched the waving stuff through the glassy floor for a while, then pulled his gaze away. Staring at it for longer when you weren't moving yourself made you sea sick…

The hedgehog sighed. He'd run so much, so long and far that he was exhausted. That didn't happen too often. And usually when he stopped for tiredness he'd reached the place he wanted to go to.

He wasn't even near that now.

But he was too tired to go on, so he curled up to sleep right where he was. When he woke up again he had dreamed some really random, bizarre stuff, but felt rested and refreshed. He had no idea how long he'd slept since there was no change of daylight or anything like it in this place, but it felt like a good night's sleep. With new energy, he continued down the tube. He'd find the way out of here today.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

* * *

Tails yawned, blinking at the beams of early daylight that fell through the window. It was only half an hour after sunrise, but he felt wide awake…. What was maybe because he'd gone to bed really early. Sonic had not come out of his room again and everything had been quiet, but with his only company snoozing away, there had been not much to do for Tails. Watching movies alone wasn't fun. If the fox was honest, he didn't like watching movies without his brother around. They were not even half as much fun without someone around to joke about the movie or to share snacks with.

Throwing back his covers, Tails crawled out of bed and made for the kitchen. He stopped briefly on the way there, tuning his ears in the direction of Sonic's door, but nothing seemed to stir there. Tails shrugged to himself and continued to the kitchen. He knew Sonic was really good at sleeping in, and if the combination of Knuckles' punches and the fights with the robots at that base had maybe dealt him a minor concussion or something, sleep would do him only good. Tails had seen Sonic shrug off a lot worse injury, and for the time being he was mildly concerned, but not near ready to panic over it. If Sonic wasn't better by the evening, well, then he'd probably start panicking.

For a while Tails considered waiting for the hedgehog to get up so they could have breakfast together, but he knew it could take until noon before Sonic showed up and in the end his hungry stomach outruled the desire to eat not alone. The fox quickly put down his breakfast and then quietly went downstairs.

He threw a short look at the clock on one of the walls. Eight o'clock. Rouge should be up by now. And if not… well, she was enough trouble usually he thought he could bother her early. Tails grinned and picked up the phone. The line beeped a couple of times, then his call was answered by a female secretary.

"GUN operations center, what can I do for you?" Hearing the flat voice immediately let the image of a boring office pop up in Tails' head and he grinned again.

"Good morning, my name is Tai-, uh, Miles Prower. I would like to talk to Rouge," he said.

"One moment, I will connect you."

"Thank you for –", Tails started, but the woman had already hung up on him and instead of her boring voice, a dissonant melody chirped through the loudspeaker. Tails listened to it for a few seconds and came to the conclusion it was a piece of sound brainwashing, then thankfully Rouge took his call.

"Hello?"

"Rouge, this is Tails. Good morning."

"Hi, cutie." The bat sounded a little tired. "What's up?"

"Sorry if I'm early or something, it's nothing urgent," Tails apologized, more out of habit being friendly to anyone than out of the actual feeling an apology was required or even expected of him.

"I'm a bat, sweetheart. I like the nightlife. Everything before 12 o'clock is sleep time for me."

"Oh. I didn't know that…" Tails twirled his double namesakes, a gesture that Rouge couldn't see of course.

"It doesn't matter much. What do you want? Make it short, I need to get myself a coffee."

Tails grinned broadly into the phone at this statement. "Knuckles, Sonic and me tracked down the Master Emerald yesterday. We found it in some sort of underwater base, near a city called Soleanna."

"Did you get a hand on the person who stole it?" Suddenly the bat sounded awake.

"No, we didn't. We ran into a few robots, but no people were around," Tails reported. "Knuckles found the Emerald hooked to some sort of machine. You know him, he didn't bother finding out what it does. He took the Emerald and we got out of there."

"I have no trouble imagining that..." Rouge giggled. "Where are you now?"

"Sonic and I, we're at my place. We brought Knuckles back to the island yesterday evening. He should have it well up in the air and above the ocean as we speak." For an instant, Tails wondered if he should be telling Rouge where Knuckles and the Emerald were. His echidna friend surely wouldn't be pleased...

Rouge's question interrupted the train of thought. "And you saw no-one? Nothing to tell you who's behind this?"

"Nope. Because of the robots and technology around the place where we found the Emerald, we considered Dr Eggman, but we're not sure at all." Tails sighed. "I was hoping you found out something."

"Sorry to disappoint you, cutie. The agency is as clueless as before, if you know what I mean. But thank you for the information."

"You're welcome. Enjoy your coffee." Tails smiled.

"You bet I will." The line clicked as Rouge hung up.

Tails put the phone down. Nothing new then… He sighed. But maybe it was a little too early to expect something to happen. After all, they just got the Master Emerald back to the island. Knuckles had said it had been connected to a machine. From the echidna's not exactly detailed report Tails wasn't able to guess what the machine's purpose had been and if it used to Emerald as a power source or something else, but whoever built the machine and stole the Emerald, they'd most likely been interrupted at whatever they had been doing. Tails guessed they could expect some sort of reaction. He hoped Knuckles would be on his guard, as well. He didn't always like the idea of their friend facing everything that came his way on his own, but he'd also made the experience that it was not often successful to try forcing your help on Knuckles, and they had already succeeded in pursuading him to not go after the thief alone. It was a start, and for now, Tails intended for him and Sonic to keep their eye open down here and be Knuckles' ground support in case the thief made another attempt at the Master Emerald.

Not wanting to miss anything, the fox turned on his computer and started a few programs to scan news reports and other data streams for mentioning of Dr Eggman, any robot sightings, the Chaos Emeralds, GUN and ultimately Sonic. After all, if the doppelganger was still there, he had to turn up somewhere sooner or later.

Satisfied with his set-up, Tails put the computer to stand-by and made his way over to the parked Tornado. He opened the cargo compartment and got the metallic floating ball out of it. After a short on-sight examination of the mysterious object Tails was assured it hadn't suffered at all from being taken out of the base and spending the night inside the Tornado. He smiled. There was a lot about this thing to find out, and unless Knuckles called because someone had returned to the Floating Island for the Emerald or he heard something about the Sonic imposter, he would have to wait and keep himself busy.

An hour later the fox had discovered the ball held a slight magnetic force of some kind. If brought close enough to some of his metallic tools, it pulled them closer until they clung to its surface. The other way around, when Tails activated an electromagnet he sometimes used to help work on the Tornado, especially the heavier parts, the magnetic field of the coil easily sucked in the floating ball and it stuck to the magnet as if glued to it. Tails had to turn off the magnet completely to get it loose again.

Now the mysterious ball bubbled softly above the workbench and Tails wondered what tests to try next on it. He'd really like to know what caused the magnetic force, and how the ball was able to float, and –

Tails' pondering was interrupted by the sounds of footsteps on the stairs behind him. Turning around, Tails found Sonic walking down the stairs and smiled. "Good morning, Sonic! Are you feeling better?"

The hedgehog nodded. "Yes, thank you, Tails."

"Do you want breakfast?"

"I… already had something." Sonic walked up to him slowly. "What are you doing?"

Tails smiled. He loved it when his elder brother showed interest in what he did, even though it usually was short-lived and Sonic didn't understand all theories and ideas Tails came up with. But he knew that Sonic cared and when he got the chance to show his work to the hedgehog he was always eager to do so. He pointed at the floating ball. "You know, I took one of those mysterious ball objects from the base. At first, I thought I'd take one for you, 'cause you seemed to like them so much." Tails smiled timidly. "And then I thought maybe we can both do something with it. You can have it to play and I can do research on it."

"Cool." Sonic smiled. "What are you researching?"

Sonic was asking about the details? This must be his lucky day. Tails grinned happily. "Oh, I want to find out as much as I can about its properties, for example how it can float and then there's this magnetic force it has I haven't understood yet. Maybe the two effects are connected."

The hedgehog studied the ball. "Can I watch?"

"Of course!" Tails' felt his tails wag blissfully. "You can always watch. Maybe you can help me."

"Sure. What help do you require?"

Tails blinked. Sonic trying to use vocabulary he maybe thought was fitting a scientific context was weird, but a welcome joke after yesterday's quietness. It remined him of the talk-like-a-robot day they'd held for fun a while ago. "Uh, you remember how you could home attack the balls, but your aim was somewhat off? I want to do a test if your homing attacks get disturbed by the ball's mysterious force."

"Okay. What do you want me to do?" Sonic looked between the ball and Tails.

The twin-tailed fox shoved the round object into the hedgehog's direction. "Here, take it outside. I'll bring a few balloons."

Sonic nodded. "Alright."

Tails already crawled into a cupboard. He knew he had balloons somewhere… Sonic would like this experiment, he was sure. Tails beamed and finally discovered the packet of balloons. He quickly inflated a couple of them and followed Sonic outside.

He found the hedgehog waiting surprisingly patiently just in front of the hangar. Odd, Tails mused. He would have expected his friend to be chasing down the ball by now…

"Okay, Sonic, here we are." Tails began to distribute the balloons across the runway on the cliff in front of his house. "We'll do it like this," he explained while he was at it. "You'll home attack the balloons. I'll be bringing the ball near to you sometimes to see if your home attacks really are affected by it, understood?"

Sonic nodded firmly. "Yes."

"Great." Tails smiled and took the ball from him. "Then we start."

Sonic nodded again before jumping up into the air and launching himself as a spiked ball at the first best balloon. It popped with a loud bang as soon as it got into contact with the sharp quills.

Tails watched two attacks on the balloons, then he pushed the floaty ball towards Sonic's next goal. The hedgehog jumped, began zooming through the air towards the balloon he'd aimed for, but halfway to it he got near to the floating metal ball and his homing attack did a rapid curve towards it. The ball bounced away when Sonic slammed into it and Tails hurriedly flew to catch it before it went down the side of the cliff.  
Landing back on the ground and still holding the ball, the fox smiled at the hedgehog. "Did you do that on purpose?"

"No. It appears I was accelerated towards this ball when I neared it," the hedgehog replied.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" Tails was still smiling.

Sonic nodded. "Very fascinating indeed."

"Let's try it again. If it's a real physical effect this ball has, we should be able to reproduce it."

They went through three more attempts, always with the same result, before they had to stop due to Sonic having shredded all balloons. Tails picked up the metallic ball and they retired to the workshop again.

Hopping to sit on the table, Tails watched the ball bob up and down gently in front of him. "It's amazing. We've never before encountered an object that could as easily interfere with your homing attacks. Before things like that only happened when there were a lot of robots around or something."

"Various possible targets can easily confuse a homing attack," Sonic confirmed. He stood with his arms folded, watching Tails. "What do we research next?"

"We… have to think a little about it first, you know?" Tails smiled. Sonic really was still interested. He couldn't believe it. "We found out so far that the ball is magnetic and that it attracts you when you do a homing attack. Either there is a connection between these things, or we're looking at two independent, but similar effects. Which is, from a scientific point of view, unlikely. When coming up with a theory explaining an effect you observed, you usually try for the explanation that requires a minimum of assumptions."

"Understood." Sonic gave a thumbs-up.

"So, the ball pulls in magnetic things, like my screwdrivers for example. It's possible this magnetic force is just a result of the ball consisting of some sort of metal. Most metals related to iron can be magnetized," Tails went on explaining, building his theories as he spoke. "But unless put into a strong magnetic field that works in the other direction as gravity, magnetic things don't float. For all we know, floating objects that don't contain something like an engine to outbalance the influence of gravity usually contain chaos energy. We should be able to detect it."

"Go ahead then," Sonic encouraged him.

Tails smiled. Sonic seemed to feel much better today than yesterday. He didn't need to worry anymore... and he loved the attention he was getting right now. He didn't get it often, and he was planning to make the best of it.

* * *

Metal Sonic stood quietly, observing the fox' work. So far, the only organic he'd seen conducting research of some sort was his creator and there were various differences between the ways they worked to be discovered. Satisfaction was slowly flowing through Metal's circuits. He had already gotten a hold of all of his creator's data he considered useful for his plans, and the more he watched the fox the more he knew he would get every other amount of knowledge he needed out of this young organic.

There was of course a thing 'Tails' and Dr Robotnik had in common. A useful trait for Metal's purposes, even… They both talked a lot about their work.

"It's possible that it influences your homing attack because of that. I think, just like the ring dash, it is a move at least party chaos based. That'd explain how it can affect you. After all, you're not made of metal."

Had there been any connection between Metal Sonic's mood and the hologram displaying his biological counterpart's face, the fox unit had been able to see a grin at that point. Oh, how wrong he was with that assumption.

Metal Sonic himself had already come to the conclusion the metallic compounds that formed his body had reacted to the same magnetic effect as everything else metallic the fox had tried. It was a simple magnetic force, his sensory was even able to record and analyze it. The interesting thing, the second reason aside of learning more about the way the fox thought and worked, was not how the ball effected him, but how it was able to affect the biological hedgehog. After all, in that point 'Tails' was right – he was not made out of metal, and discovering the cause of the influence could be useful for battles with future foes with similar fighting techniques and physical make-up. Like the black hedgehog clone Shadow for example.

By now 'Tails' had activated a device scanning for chaos energy and used it on the mysterious ball. "We were right," he announced. "It contains about the equivalent of ten to twenty rings in chaos energy."

"That is not very much for the impact it has," Metal Sonic noticed. He had to keep a conversation going. He wanted to know more about the fox unit until he revealed himself. From experience he knew that most organics were easy to see through after a short time of observing their behavior. As long as the fox thought he was the friend he knew, he would behave naturally, giving Metal Sonic plenty of data on his default behavior. When he soon took the fox under his control to force him to help his plans, it would be easy to see if he was being honest about the information he gave him. The fox was known to be intelligent and might try to trick him even if frightened.

On the other hand, Metal Sonic didn't worry much about 'Tails' not talking. He knew the fox would tell him everything he wanted sooner or later. Organic creatures were weak and pathetic. Unlike a robot, their fragile bodies responded to malfunctions and destroyed parts with a thing called pain. Metal Sonic, naturally, had never experienced any pain. But he knew its effects on living creatures, how much it impaired their operation… and how much they dreaded it.

Pain had to be something horrible. A few of the test subjects of his creator's had actually begged be killed instead of being inflicted any pains. Apparently the termination of their lousy existence was not as bad to them as pain. Metal Sonic found the concept fascinating. What could be worse than ending your existence?

But it didn't matter. He knew the fox would talk like a waterfall when he wanted him to. All he had to do was threaten to make him feel pain. Or to terminate his existence. Or both.


	13. Eyes In The Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got carried away. Like, a lot.
> 
> But it couldn't have been intended as a death trap for a hedgehog in the far future, right?

The noise of thousands of liters of water rushing down the various pipes and washing through broad canals was all but deafening. The water level in Hydrocity was higher than it was normally… what was almost what Knuckles had been expecting when he went down here in the morning. Now it was almost noon and the echidna could tell there was a lot more water than there should be in here.

Walking on the narrow path longside a canal so filled to the very brim that the water gushed over the rim in regular intervals, Knuckles was keeping a firm eye on his surroundings. Hydrocity could be dangerous, especially under a condition like this. It was Angel Island's water reservoir, a network of tunnels carved deep inside the island's socket. Like most tunnels, the one he was in sloped in a rather steep angle.

In a way, everytime he was here, Knuckles marveled at the genius who had built all of this, so many centuries ago. After the island was lifted the first time, after it became the Floating Island it was known as now, the Master's energy field caused it to levitate high in the atmosphere. Only the invisible protective field of Emerald energy around it made for the possibility of life, providing an air density that matched that of any alpine region on Mobius' surface and a climate with almost tropical summers but harsh, long and cold winters.

Still, his ancestors had encountered a bad problem during the first few years of living on the island. Digging through the old scrolls left behind in the caves near the old Hidden Palace, Knuckles had found records of those first few years on the Floating Island. It had all but threatened to become a desert. A thing simple to explain if you thought about it. No need to be anything like a scientist. The water from the surface came from clouds. If Angel Island floated above the cloud layer most of the time, little rain could fall onto it. Droughts, decaying forests and many fires had been the results.

But someone had come up with a way to solve the problem. Also back then, a guardian had been present, a person like Knuckles, his mind closely linked to the Master Emerald. A person that had been able to control the island's flight and occasionally lower it under the clouds. In order to reduce the need for that, to be more independent, the Floating Island's inhabitants had begun to construct Hydrocity. A work Knuckles could tell had taken years.

In the end stood probably hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels, gathering water from the surface creeks and the few lakes. Using the simple fact that all water flowed down a hill, the canals and pipes of Hydrocity led all of this water to the center of the water system, a large carved out space in the middle of the island's socket. The lowest point of Angel Island that wasn't solid rock. You couldn't go there because it was usually flooded, but Knuckles had seen the drafts.

The principle for Hydrocity's circuit of water was simple. Gravity let the water flow down to the core of the island where it was gathered. Being near to the center of the island also meant this place was very near to the center point of the mighty chaos field the Master Emerald reflected into it. And that again meant it was very near to the source of the antigravity field that kept the island afloat. The constructors of Hydrocity had sought out the places where this field was strongest and constructed a few tunnels leading back out to the top of the island's mountains. Using the residual chaos energy to pump up the water, they fed it back into the creeks in which it flowed down again, completing the circle.

Of course, water was lost to the system by evaporation and the few smaller creeks that flowed off the island's edge, but with Hydrocity's water Angel Island had become relatively independent of the rain. Every now and then the guardians used to lower it below the clouds to refill the reserves, and after a while it had as much become routine that the Master Emerald on its own initiated the regular descents.

Now, thousands of years later, all of the civilization creating this place were gone, and only Knuckles was left to take care of it, and he did so dutifully. In spite of its look, Hydrocity was one of the most sensitive parts about the island, and if something was off, here was the first place you'd notice it.

And something was off. Knuckles could feel it in the Master Emerald's energy field. It wasn't exactly unstable. But it wasn't really stable either. Something was off, too little to really get a grasp on it and identify the problem, but it was there and it was making Knuckles nervous. He knew it was most likely just a result the Emerald's displacement and would resolve itself on its own, but he was wary.

The echidna shoved his thoughts off when he reached the end of the tunnel he'd been following. Next to where he stopped walking, the water from the over-filled canal dropped a good twenty meters, met with several other jets of water from other canals and together they continued the fall with an ear-shattering roar until they cascaded into a larger tunnel and vanished into the darkness below.

Knuckles nodded to himself. All looked okay here, aside of the very high water levels. But he'd expected them and knew what had caused them. The water from all over the island came down here by gravity and was pumped back up using the Master Emerald's energy field. With the Emerald gone, the water kept coming here, but it didn't go back up to the top, and now that the system was working again the backwater was just beginning to subside. But Knuckles had seen worse; after the incident with Perfect Chaos the complete Hydrocity had been underwater. Now it was only about a third of it.

Satisfied with the canals here, Knuckles turned and walked back part of the way he'd come. He'd check on another level.

Lights were dim in the underground tunnels, but Knuckles had good night vision and progressed without problems here usually. He knew every corner, every tunnel here like the back of his own hand and unlike Sonic the one time he'd been here years ago, Knuckles never got lost. Actually, he even knew how to get through here without getting wet at all. But that only went for when water levels were normal. Since they weren't now, the echidna had been forced to swim and dive through a couple of flooded passages and by now he was freezing. Angel Island's water was mostly mountain water, from creeks that partly fed off glaciers, and it was cold as ice.

Reaching one of the small tunnels that connected the different levels, Knuckles began climbing up a ladder in it. His wet gloves and shoes easily slipped off the treads, his muscles shivered from the cold anyway and when he finally reached the top floor he was gasping for breath and had to sit down for a moment to recover. Luckily, being higher up, the floor on this level was dry.

For a few minutes Knuckles sat against the cool stone wall, waiting for his body to recover. He was, in all truth, worried that such a short climb could get him so much out of breath. It was hard to get him out of breath normally. Today, he'd hardly done anything but inspect the tunnels, and yet he was already feeling exhausted.

Knuckles sighed as he climbed back to his feet and slowly began down the tunnel he was in. Like the others, it had a canal running next to the path, but this one wasn't as big or noisy like the others, and it wasn't as full. Good so far.

The echidna gently rubbed his forehead as he walked along the water, following its flow. Ever since he'd stood up, the impression of a distant headache lingered behind his brow, but it hadn't changed throughout the morning. It had not gotten worse, but it had not gone away either. Probably he was just tired.

A grimace slipped over Knuckles' face at the thought. He'd not really had the best of nights, actually. After raising the island and setting it on a proper course, he'd found himself a simple meal and retired to the cave just a few minutes of walk from the Temple of Chaos he had furnished as a simple, but comfy houseroom. Especially in the colder seasons, it was not a good idea to stay outside all the time.

But no matter how tired he'd been after the long day he'd had, Knuckles had not slept well. He'd dropped off pretty quickly alright, but then he'd wakened up in cold sweat, shaking from the shock of a nightmare he couldn't remember a thing about after he'd opened his eyes. It had been difficult to go back to sleep afterwards, as it always was after you had a bad dream, and when Knuckles finally managed he'd tossed and turned more than actually slept. In a way he'd been glad when dawn crept into his house and ended the night.

Climbing a bridge that crossed another canal merging with the one he'd been following, Knuckles briefly stopped on it to gaze into the water. It was rather clear at this point of Hydrocity and he could see the bottom of the canal through the blur of the rushing water. For a moment the echidna stared into it, wishing you could look through everything as clearly.

The water stirred with the current as he gazed into it, and suddenly there was something at the bottom of it. Knuckles blinked, once, twice, and slowly the image cleared under the blur of the water surface. A shard. An Emerald shard. As he watched, the water around it seemed to fade away and the sound of it running down the canal below the bridge slowly muted in his ears.

All he could hear and see was the shard, brilliant green facets and razor sharp edges. And then, with a sickening noise, it split in two, right down the middle, a ragged gash in the glazed crystal shape.

In an act of desperate reflex, Knuckles wanted to reach out a hand and snatch the pieces, but as he stretched out his hand, the broken shard moved away from him, slowly at first, then ever faster, until he was running after it.

And then, suddenly, it was gone and the tunnel was back. Still running and not considering a stop, the echidna looked around hastily, searching for the mysterious shard, but instead of catching the smallest glimpse of it, he found himself suddenly falling.

The soft gurgling of the smaller canal had been replaced by the roar of fuming waterfalls again. Knuckles rowed his arms uselessly as he fell towards the white foam at the bottom of the drop, momentarily too disorientated and shocked to remember he could try gliding. Not that there would have been much places to glide to.

Impacting the water surface after a fall of roughly fifteen meters felt like falling onto concrete. At least it hurt as much. Knuckles bit his lip, barely containing a groan of pain as he went underwater. For a few precious seconds he was paralyzed from the impact, then instinct took over and he struggled his way back to the surface.

His head breaking through it, he spat out a mouthful of water and gulped in a lungful of air, paddling his feet to remain at the surface. He had to paddle hard to keep from being pulled underwater by the current that sucked the water to the reservoir in the island's heart. If he got sucked into this tunnel along with it, he'd be long drowned by the time he was returned to the surface somewhere at the mountains no matter how good a swimmer he was.

With a quick look around Knuckles assessed his situation. He had to get up to the path again. Three waterfalls, all coming from different canals, rushed down into the large pool he was in. Two of them were to close together to get past, but the third was a little separated from the others, leaving a few meters of wall free. Knuckles considered it was probably his only chance to climb up there. The water was cold and already he could feel fatigue hitting. He had to get out of here quickly.

The echidna rounded the area where the waterfall impacted carefully. The last thing he needed was being pressed underwater by it. He pulled through the most critical part with a few strong breast strokes and latched to the wall, digging his knuckles spikes into the rock. His body felt heavy and his climb turned out slower than he wanted it to. When he finally pulled himself up onto the path of the tunnel he sank to the floor there and leaned against the wall, staring numbly at the cascading water. It was the second time today he looked down there…

Knuckles shivered, only partly from the cold. You needed twenty minutes to get here from that little bridge. Why had he come back? And… why didn't he remember a thing of it other than that he'd been running, but surely not as far? He'd just lost twenty minutes. He'd zoned out, or something, and almost got himself killed with it. Had he been dreaming? Sleeping on his feet? If it was a vision of any sort, he surely failed to understand it.

Drawing a slow breath, the echidna let his head drop against the wall in his back, suddenly dizzy. Just what was wrong with him?

* * *

This place was weirding him out. Sure, Sonic had been to a lot weird places in his life. The Floating Island, especially its Sky Sanctuary Zone, haunted castles, places with giant pinball machines, the industrial hell of Eggman's bases, outer space, foreign planets… He'd travelled through time, gotten glimpses of the past and possible futures. He'd even been in a story book. But the weirdest places he'd ever visited remained the Special Zones. And this place here seemed like one giant cluster of them. It was like… yeah, the mother of all Special Zones and it appeared very intend on being even more strange than all the others combined.

The colorful tunnel had ended somewhat abruptly just a couple minutes ago. At first Sonic had feared he'd reached a dead end when a wall as flashy as the rest of the tunnel rose before him. For a few moments he'd stood in front of it, trying to spot anything like a door, a tiny hole that would allow him to get past. Then, more out of desperation than anything else, he'd felt for the wall, hoping if he knocked on it he'd maybe find a weaker point of it he could probably bash in with a spin.

But he didn't need to do any of this. Stretched out for the unknown material the wall consisted of, his fingers had just kind of phased through it without meeting any resistance. The wall, or what he'd thought was a wall because it totally looked like a wall, wasn't real. It wasn't solid. Very carefully, fearing he'd encounter a bottomless pit behind it, Sonic walked through.

Fortunately for the blue hedgehog, there was no such thing as a bottomless pit behind. At least not anywhere near enough for him to see, which admittedly wasn't very far. It was dark around, a little like the place where he'd landed after falling from… somewhere he still didn't remember.

It was another thing that unsettled the hedgehog. His memory had a gap, a blank space between that explosion in the underwater base and his fall that got him to where he was now. Sonic had no idea what could have happened in between and it was unnerving. Was this how Shadow had felt? As if he'd lost something, no, lost a part of his life? The worst thing about it was being so completely in the dark about it. What had he done in the time he didn't remember? Did he hit his head? What had happened to his friends that had been with him? Were they in this weird place as well? Was he alone here? Sonic wasn't sure which option felt worse to him. He'd never been afraid of being alone, quite the opposite even. Sonic liked alone time. There was something peaceful and relaxing about it.  
He neither felt peaceful nor relaxed at all now. Wherever he was, he wanted out of here, and quickly.

The blue hedgehog looked around. An eerie quiet hung heavily over the darkness around, illuminated just by a faint green glow that came seeping down from somewhere above him, but even titling his head back and squinting upwards Sonic wasn't able to pinpoint the source. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, or from very far away.

The light was weak and Sonic stood for several minutes before his eyes began to properly adjust to the darkness and he could make out his surroundings. Unlike the first dark place, this one wasn't open. There were walls, vertically towering into the glooming space above where they faded from view. Either they ended there, or they were just too high to see the end of them.

Sonic walked up to the closest wall. Together with a second one, it former a kind of corridor that ran a few hundred meters straight ahead. He couldn't see any further.

_I wish Knux was here_ , Sonic thought. It wasn't just that he would have liked company right now. It would be great to have Tails or Knuckles with him. Heck, he'd even take Shadow or Amy. But there was something that made him regret his echidna friend wasn't with him especially. Sonic himself didn't see overly bad in the dark. But even compared to a hedgehog's already good eyesight in dark places Knuckles had excellent night vision. Maybe not as good as Rouge's, but it by far surpassed Sonic's own. Maybe it was because echidnas dug into stuff and underground it was dark that Knuckles' eyes were sensitive to light even when it was very dim. Sonic didn't know and he didn't really care. He guessed that Knuckles saw so well in the dark resulted in his disliking for overly bright lights. Anyway, right now having someone that could see better in this dark place than he could would help for sure.

But since it looked like he wasn't in for any company anytime soon, Sonic examined the wall on his own. His fingertips encountered a perfectly plain, smooth surface. He knocked against it, but it gave hardly a sound or vibration in reply to it. Sonic frowned.

_What is that stuff? Glass?_ If he looked up against it, he could see the light from above through it. Maybe it was transparent or something. There wasn't enough light to really say.

Taking a few steps back from the glazed wall again, Sonic was able to distinguish a dim reflection of himself, almost invisible against the dark background. On the whim of the moment, the blue hedgehog waved his arms at the reflection and watched it respond, then pulled a few funny faces at himself. He grew tired of it after a moment and decided to turn away, but the image suddenly blurred over. The space that had been occupied by his face seconds before turned pitch black for a second, then a pair of eyes stared back from the darkness in firm and deep red.

Sonic jumped, spines ridging on his back with the short surge of adrenaline. He knew those eyes. He'd seen them in a dozen nightmares, back when he was younger, when his war against Eggman began and when that much younger Sonic had been secretly terrified to end up encaged in a robot like one of the animals he used to free from the Doctor's mad machines. And then he'd met it, the metal hedgehog shell, and it had haunted him for weeks to come.  
In the end, Metal Sonic had not been a shell at all. Not a walking (flying, rather) hedgehog prison. A weapon, built to mirror Sonic's own abilities, and to the day, even though he'd defeated the robot hedgehog several times, Metal Sonic remained one of the most threatening creations Eggman had ever made.

Unsure if it was an image he saw, an illusion cast by this mysterious wall, Sonic stood and gazed back at the red stare, body tense, ready to jump and defend himself.

He didn't need to. With a blink, the eyes were gone and only his own, familiar reflection remained, although it had gained a rather wary look all of a sudden.

The blue hedgehog kept his eyes on the reflection for another long moment, fully expecting something to happen, but it didn't, and he shook his head to himself.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he'd been imagining things.

"This place drives you crazy," he mumbled, then at finding the spoken word help chase off the eerie feeling he continued. "I hate Special Zones. I mean, yeah, they're fun for a while, but this one is getting on my nerves by now. Where's that damn Emerald, anyway?"

Of course, nobody answered his monologue, and Sonic turned away from the wall, looking down the corridor ahead. Well, the way out of here clearly wasn't behind him, so probably it was somewhere over there. It wasn't really a decision to walk into the dark space before him. There simply wasn't anything else he could have done.

Unlike that first place, there were no echoes here. Something, maybe the strange walls, seemed to be swallowing up all sounds he made. Even his footsteps sounded faint and quiet, as if walking on carpet, but the ground was the same smooth, almost polished feeling stuff like the walls.

Sonic walked slowly. He could make out the walls and floor only through the tiny reflection of the green tinted glow on them and this vague picture of his surroundings ended just a few meters ahead of him. With his feet making almost no sound at all, there was nothing to hear but his own breathing and it sounded overly loud. Another few minutes of total silence followed and Sonic became aware of the noise his heart made with every beat, of the rushing of blood through his body. He could hear it in his ears. He'd heard it before sometimes, after some heavy exercising you could hear your hard pulse in your ears. But now he was only walking slowly and his pulse was little more than resting level. Yet, every rhythmic beat, every inhale that drew air into his lungs suddenly seemed so loud he totally expected it could cause an echo and it felt weird that it didn't.

He saw the wall before him just in time. An arm length more and he would have run into it face first. "Whoa," he said and the quiet word was like a shout piercing through the silent darkness. Sonic winced and gazed around. He quickly discovered that he'd just reached a corner and the corridor continued to the left of him.

Carefully he continued his way, more alert now. He could barely see a thing and if he didn't watch out he'd maybe really walk himself into a wall. Or what if the bottomless pit actually did exist, hiding somewhere in this dark floor? The mental image of walking off a cliff without even knowing it and falling to his death was not really appreciated.

Sonic swallowed. It's just some dark tunnel thingy, he told himself, not daring to speak again. It's not like one of the tunnels under Knux' ruins on Angel Island either. Not build by crazy ancient pals of his that put traps all over the place… Right?

Thinking about the Sandopolis Pyramid, Labyrinth Zone or Lost World didn't really trigger many pleasant memories at the moment and Sonic cursed himself. Since when was he so great at talking himself into uneasiness? He'd never been afraid of the dark. That was something silly and childish. No, it was idiotic. Idiotic for someone who'd fought and beaten giant monsters and evil spirits before. Yes, it was. The reasoning made sense, didn't it? Sonic was somewhat sure he'd convinced Tails with it if the fox were here…

In front of him, the way forked into three. _Great_. For a moment Sonic stood undecided, glancing down each of the three corridors that went on from the intersection. They all looked the same. Dimly outlined walls and floor that after a short distance vanished into a black void. The hedgehog chewed his bottom lip. If he took the wrong way, he might get lost and never get outta here…

Lost.

Get lost?

No, he _was_ lost already! The thought popped up suddenly and the realization dumped a fair amount of fresh adrenaline into his body.

He was lost. He'd been lost for… hours, days, weeks? He didn't know, he didn't remember when he'd gotten lost in the first place. He was lost ever since he'd first landed here! He had to get out of here!

_No! Wait._

Sonic knew that panicking didn't help you when you were lost. He'd made the experience. If you panicked and just ran somewhere, you'd just get all the way more lost.

_As if I could get any more lost than I already am_ , the hedgehog thought acidly. But it was a clear, conscious thought and it cleared his head for the moment. _Think! You're lost alright. Now man up and find a way to get yourself un-lost, Sonic._

_Great, now I'm talking to myself…_

_And that's a problem why? Nobody else to talk to, huh?_

Sonic grinned a little. "I'm going crazy," he mumbled. But that wasn't a reason to stand around and wait until he was entirely loony, right? He might as well go on and check out the rest of this dark place.

"Yup, I'll do that," the hedgehog announced to the silence around. His look briefly flashed between the three paths, then he picked the left one and strolled onwards.

He reached more intersections every few minutes now, sometimes the way just split into two, sometimes there were six or seven paths that continued into the blackness. Remembering something Tails had said once, he kept taking the leftmost way all the time. According to Tails, and granted Sonic remembered correctly, if you kept taking the same way all the time, you'd eventually get out of a labyrinth. You systematically walked through every way of the labyrinth by following along the wall. Or something like that. So, Sonic picked the wall to his left, determined to get out of this weird place at once.


	14. Voices in the Mist

A cold wind was brushing through his fur, turning the dampness that remained after his involuntary swim into liquid ice pouring down his body from head to toes.

When he'd gotten out of Hydrocity, Knuckles had hurried to his home to get out of his soaked clothing and try to dry up. Now he was wearing fresh and most importantly dry gloves, socks and shoes, but he didn't manage to completely dry his fur and he still felt cold. As if that wasn't enough, he was feeling lightheaded and the shock of having apparently zoned out and walked himself into a waterfall without a memory of doing it had not yet settled.

Right now the echidna was climbing up the slope towards the crater of the island's center volcano and had long cleared the last forests that would offer protection. Up here in the alpine rockiness around the highest summits, only small plants grew between the rocks and every now and then a stubborn small patch of snow had survived even the summer. The actual glaciers shone bright white in the distance, telling that in spite of its tropically warm summers, there was a different face of Angel Island's climate. The summer was over, the colorful forests below spoke of it clearly, and the way the wind was cold and the beams of the sun were bright but devoid of actual warmth told Knuckles in less than two months winter would cover Angel Island under its freezing white blankets and not release it from its icy grasp before a few months later.

Knuckles wrapped the towel he'd brought along around his shoulders. He'd not meant to get it wet just yet, but he was shivering and he didn't want to snatch a cold. Or maybe he already had. The guardian faltered at the idea. Maybe that was what was wrong with him. He didn't sleep well, he felt fatigued… Perhaps he was ill? After all, he'd had to swim the last bit of the way to the Mystic Ruins the other day after his glide dropped him into the sea and the water had not been exactly warm.

Then again, there was the vision or such that had led to his latest soaking in cold water, and he could not blame this one on a light sickness. He was actually rather sure it had something to do with the Emerald. There was something he wasn't able to put a finger on, something that wasn't like it was supposed to be.

But he couldn't concentrate like this. First, he needed to relax and rest up a bit so he could think properly again.

That was why he was climbing up to the edge of Lava Reef, specifically to a place that had hot springs. He came there often; especially in winter when anywhere else the water was too cold to bathe in. Sometimes he jokingly referred to the hot water pool up there as his bathtubs. Surely he'd be able to properly warm himself up there.

Knuckles reached his destination about ten minutes later. Surrounded by high, jagged black rocks and shielded from the winds by the crater's rim, several small pools snuggled into the slope. Clear, hot water bled out of the mountain near the top, poured down in a narrow creek before it gathered in a first pond, from there flowed into a second, passed through it and cascaded into several more. Some were only a meter wide, the largest had a diameter of about three and a depth of roughly a meter in the middle of it. From the last pool, the creek resurfaced to snake down the black rock of the crater towards its center that held the boiling heat of Lava Reef's volcano. The water never reached the red-hot liquid stone, though, it evaporated about three meters before it got there, leaving nothing but a thin mist behind that floated upwards until the winds caught hold of it and tore it asunder.

Knuckles placed his towel on a rock not far from the steaming pools, the pulled off his shoes, socks and gloves and put them down next to it. The rough, warm ground prickled under his bare feet as he walked up to the second largest pool.

He slipped into the water slowly. At first, it felt so hot he thought he'd burn his feet off, but the sensation passed quickly and the echidna lowered himself into the pool. It wasn't deep, where he had entered it he could sit upright in it and it reached to just his chest.

Knuckles reclined against the rock wall of the pond, letting his head fall backwards until it rested against the rock as well. The warm water felt wonderful, melting the cold out of his body and relaxing cramps he didn't know had been in his muscles. Knuckles sighed, letting his arms float weightlessly in the water, and closed his eyes. With the physical discomfort also his worries about the Master Emerald and the general stress of the past days faded into a distant memory. Maybe it was just the warmth making him drowsy, but for the moment Knuckles didn't care.

Listening to the gentle gurgling the hot creek caused flowing from pool to pool, the echidna gladly allowed his mind to drift into a daze. But even half asleep, something was pulling at him, a whisper too quiet to focus on brushing past his ears, and he couldn't place it. And his head still hurt.

* * *

Thoughtfully Tails chewed on a cookie, watching Sonic at the other side of the hangar. Currently the hedgehog seemed intent on holding a staring contest with the floaty ball. His interest in the thing was beginning to feel weird to Tails. Sure, he'd liked the things a lot of first sight even, but… it was the way he was interested in it. It just wasn't… like him.

Sonic's normal interest in something was basically based on if you could do something fun with it (which usually involved something related to speed, running around, jumping, flying or some crazy stunt), or if it was beautiful to look at. The ball sure did have something beautiful about it, something fascinating to look at, but… Sonic had not chased it down like in the base once. Not at all.

Instead, he was really interested in Tails' research on it. Heck, he was practically following his every move and word. As if he needed to memorize all of it, and while Tails had really enjoyed the attention he was getting at first, as the day went and it didn't change it was beginning to appear odd to him. Sonic had never before, even if Tails could tell he tried on various occasions and he appreciated that, Sonic had never before been able to keep his attention on one thing, a scientific thing no less. Normally the blue hedgehog's attention span managed to watch and help Tails work on something for an hour, two if he really meant to show him how much he liked him, but that was it. Tails didn't blame him. Science was his game, not Sonic's, and that was okay.

But today… Today Sonic was more interested than Tails himself sometimes. And he'd used words and formulations the fox would have never imagined the hedgehog even knew, let alone considered using.

Tails frowned, watching his friend still studying the floaty ball, when he noticed yet another weird thing. It was almost evening by now and Sonic had not eaten a thing. Okay, he'd said he'd had breakfast, but that was hours ago. Even Tails was hungry now, and with Sonic it happened less often that he wasn't hungry than the other way around. Sonic was always hungry. Always.

Knuckles often made comments on it, but Tails understood perfectly why it was like that. Sonic's metabolism worked a lot faster than that of most other people. Sonic as a whole worked faster than anyone else, spare Shadow maybe, but he was an artificially created life form and in many aspects not like a normal Mobian. Tails thought it made sense that due to the way his body burned energy so quickly, and considering how much calories just a few minutes of super sonic running had to use up, the hedgehog could put away more than three other people together. Feeding Sonic was always like feeding a famine victim…

And that was partly why Tails was worried. Sonic didn't look hungry. It was another thing that was totally unlike his friend.

Now that he thought about it, there were a lot of things about Sonic that were odd. Little things. The weird words he used. That he didn't hop around. That he hadn't been out for a run the whole day. That he didn't constantly have a snack in reach. That he hadn't hugged him or patted his head or something like that the whole day. He had not even called him his little bro. Not once.

Tails gulped down what remained of the cookie. Not once. Sonic just wasn't acting like Sonic. At all. A cold shudder ran down his back, making his fur prickle. There had been this person looking like Sonic. GUN's cameras had recorded him, and Knuckles had seen him. He'd stolen the Master Emerald, so most likely they had been in his base the other day. What if… He shuddered. What if they'd taken the wrong Sonic back home? What if the real Sonic was still in this underwater base? What if he'd gotten lost, or scared of all the water, or if he was hurt?

Chewing his lip, Tails looked over to the blue hedgehog again. He had to find out if he had the real Sonic with him… and if he did, what had happened to him to act so weird.

Slowly he stood from the sofa he sat on and got upstairs, trying to look unsuspicious. Thankfully Sonic didn't seem to care he went to the flat, maybe he thought he was just going to the bathroom.

But Tails was headed for Sonic's room. He stopped in front of it, listening if Sonic was still downstairs, then he silently opened the door and slipped inside.

The first thing he noticed was the mess in the room. He grinned, almost thankful to find something normal. It'd be shocking if Sonic tidied up his room…

Cautiously Tails navigated through the chaos of dirty clothing, jewel cases and other random items on the floor until he stood in the middle of it. He turned around slowly. On first sight, he could find nothing proving his bad feelings. Then he beheld the cupboard and let out a gasp.

On one of the photos Sonic had taped to the doors, the middle that should show the blue hedgehog's happy grin in between Knuckles and Tails was nothing but a pitch black burn.

* * *

Back at the top of the Emerald altar the cool autumn winds were almost as cold as up in the mountains. Knuckles brushed a dreadlocked spine out of his face, violet eyes warily fixed on the Master Emerald. Two days had passed since he'd restored it to here by now. Two days of peace for the powerful gem, and from all Knuckles knew two days should be enough for the energy to settle.

It had not, and it worried Knuckles. He didn't really understand. The Emerald had not been broken. Its energy had been used, for something. For a something that had never happened before in all the years Knuckles was its guardian. Something had been done to the jewel and the aftereffects were still fathomable in the mighty chaos field surrounding it. Whatever had happened went deeper than most abuses the Master had suffered before, and Knuckles' knowledge about it ended at 'something'. How was he to fix it if he knew so little about it?

The guardian sighed, reaching out a hand to touch the glazing surface of the green gemstone. Even through the fabric of his glove, he could feel the energy. Being near the Master always made him feel it strongly, but touching it… It was like fire. When you came near to it, you could feel the heat. And when you touched it…

Knuckles rarely ever felt like the Emerald's glow was burning him. No, it was much gentler. It did not aim to hurt him. He knew it could. The power it held within would be easily enough to vaporize him. But it never did. Unlike some people he knew, Knuckles had never been scared of the Emeralds, Chaos and Master alike. No, scared wasn't the word, but he met them with due respect.

He slowly traced his thumb over the polished crystal, his palm not moving from where it rested flat against the Emerald's surface. Since he'd brought it back to the temple… He'd never been so close to burn himself on it. Knuckles looked at his hand. It didn't, in the most obvious sense, hurt him. It wasn't pain. It was like just the level of heat when you moved your hand close to a flame and held it right at the spot before you reached the level where it would begin to burn you. And Knuckles stood, feeling the Master's glow _just not_ burn his hand, a pricking, almost painful sting. Something was so very off, but he couldn't place it.

The echidna's gaze bore into the Emerald's shine, straining to look past the glazing facets. Straining to look into it. Sometimes you could. Sometimes it would show something. If it wanted to, maybe. If it could, or both, or neither of them. The Emerald's moods were complex. Knuckles stared into the light, unblinking. _Talk to me. Please._ A silent prayer.

But all he saw was light. Green and bright and pulsing in an almost unnoticeable frequency that was just a bit too much off from what was usual. But that was all he saw in it.

Knuckles let out a breath he didn't know he'd held and withdrew his hand, turning around and taking a step away.

It was then that he heard it, a whisper floating with the autumn breeze.

 _Guardian_ …

Knuckles' head whirled around, but the Emerald stood as before, slowly, magically turning on its pedestal, and no other creature but him was around.

 _Guardian_ , the whisper came again, soft and its direction unfathomable.

Deciding his eyes were useless at the moment, Knuckles closed them, focusing on his hearing. Near the Master Emerald, the task was harder than it should be, the hum of the gem's energy field almost deafening, echoing in his skull.

_Guardian…_

Finally tracking the whisper again, he started walking towards it without much of thought about it.

He could feel a presence, something or someone that wasn't supposed to be… here. And then, another presence, far away, but the short moment of thought spent on it was enough to tell Knuckles it meant harm to the Master. Had already done harm to it?

The echidna took another step, trying to get closer and get a grip on whatever it was he was shown here, but when he was to set his foot down again, there ground was gone and he almost fell. Wildly rowing his arms, Knuckles fell backwards and dropped hard onto his tail. He stared wide-eyed at what was before him. Or maybe rather at what was not.

The temple was gone. He sat right at the island's edge, just where his feet still were the ground ended in a sharp cliff. Behind it came nothing but a very long drop. The white cotton of clouds flowed a hundred meters below, the wispy sea Angel Island was floating in.

Knuckles turned his head. Behind him, there was no Master Emerald. Just a deep green meadow, the long grass blades brushing along his legs in the wind, and a couple hundred meters inland the first treeline of a forest shone in the colorful dress of autumn. Still gasping, the echidna just sat and stared at his surroundings. He was a good twenty minutes walk from the temple at minimum.

 _It happened again,_ he thought worriedly. _I have to stop zoning out like that if I don't want to kill myself…_

He didn't quite feel like standing up right now, unsure if his legs would carry him, and for another few minutes just sat and blankly stared at the sea of clouds below the edge, at the twirls and vortexes and fluffed-out hills.

Slowly he lifted his hand and looked at his palm. It still tingled with the Emerald's burn.

* * *

It came without warning. One second Sonic was walking through the same, dark tunnel, eyes fixed on the barely visible outline the wall to his left made against the floor, the next this wall didn't exist anymore. The blue hedgehog felt something cold and damp against his skin.

"What's that?", he wondered and his words sounded even louder than before now. He squinted up, but the light was gone, and with the tiny optical reference he'd had before taken away, it felt as if the entire world had suddenly vanished. _Now even the world is lost!_

Sonic shook himself and slammed on all mental brakes. The world couldn't just get lost. No, it couldn't. _I'm not falling, I'm still standing on something, so the floor's still there_ , he reasoned with himself. _I just don't see it anymore._

_Why don't I see it anymore?_

The hedgehog took a slow, deep breath to calm himself and be able to think clearly again. He tensed, held his breath for a few moments. There was something… He exhaled again, then took another breath, slowly, trying to really consciously feel for it and make out what was bothering him. The air was cold, a lot colder than it had been before, and it felt heavy and wet when he breathed it. It was weird and unexpected, but somehow he knew the feeling.

Sonic forced himself to keep breathing slowly and suddenly he had it. That's… fog? He felt for his fur. It was cool to the touch and seemed damp as his hand brushed over it and smoothed it down against his body.

_Fog. I'm in a strange, dark, foggy labyrinth…_

He shook his head. "Okay," he said aloud, just to hear a voice. The fog seemed to amplify the word tenfold, so loud did it sound to his ears and the two triangles flattened against his scalp. Sonic shivered a little, unsure if it was the cold seeping into his body or if the general uneasiness he felt caused the soft tremble.  
"Okay," he said again. "Then now there's fog, too, and I can't see a thing anymore. But I'm still here, and the floor's still here, and probably the walls are still here, too. So, everything's just like it was, huh?"

Was it? Even more carefully now, Sonic inched to the left, one arm held out before him. After a few steps his fingers met the smooth surface of the wall next to him and for a couple of seconds the hedgehog gave in to the impulse of leaning against it. Something about the cool, hard feeling it gave was ridiculously reassuring.

Sonic took his time to get his bearings and slowly he got used to the total blackness around. Maybe the fog was temporary and would lift after a while. Or it was only here and if he went on he'd get out of it. The idea seemed more promising than waiting things out. After all, did it matter so much he couldn't see anything anymore? He'd not really seen a lot before, either. He'd been here for what were probably hours and he'd not encountered anything dangerous. Maybe this place was harmless. Yeah, just a weird, dark, harmless labyrinth. He'd probably find it funny in an amusement park.

The hedgehog smiled a little at the thought. It wasn't really different from an amusement park ride, was it? He just had to go on along the wall like before and he'd be out of here. "Yeah, it's easy." He nodded to himself, laying his left palm onto the wall and starting to walk alongside it.

At first, he tested the ground before him with his foot carefully before he stepped onto it. He also considered holding a hand out before him in case a wall came up in his way, but after a while of walking like that his shoulder began to cramp and his dropped his arm to his side. He wasn't actually fast enough to hurt himself when he ran into something, right?

Another few minutes later he stopped testing the floor in front of him. He'd never been in a totally dark, silent place like this before and it was starting to really take effect on his mind, knocking him into a strange, trance-like state.

Time didn't exist anymore and space was on a good way to follow it into oblivion. The only things that kept Sonic somewhat rooted were the touch of the wall on his left hand and the ground he walked on. But he couldn't see it, and he couldn't hear anything but the sounds he made himself. At some point, he didn't hear his breathing anymore and had forgotten that it was even there.

His mind was getting starved for impressions to process and his imagination was starting to go wild. He suddenly saw things again. The wall next to him, the occasional ancient hieroglyphics on it, like the stuff he'd seen on Knuckles' island or other ancient buildings he'd been in. Then he imagined he was in one of Eggman's bases, walking through an endless stretch of bizarre machinery for even more bizarre purposes. Every now and then he snapped himself out of it, reminding himself there was nothing there to see.

But his brain wanted to see, and so Sonic started imagining nicer things. He tried to think of what the dark place he was walking through would look like if he could see it. He imagined large stalactite caves, jungles with a lots of colorful plants and little animals. He could picture the butterflies fluttering gently in the sunlight before him so vividly for a second he was sure he could really feel the warmth of sun if he stretched out a hand for it. Then he realized what he was doing and shook his head.

When a sound came out of the darkness behind him Sonic immediately froze in shock. It was so long since he'd heard anything at all… His ears turned around, perked in listening, but the noise didn't come again and the hedgehog told himself he'd been hearing things.

He returned to walking again, but he'd taken just a few steps when the sound came again, louder this time, closer. A high-pitched, whining howl that crept up through the black fog towards him. Like a jet engine on overspin. Or some sort of tortured, otherworldly animal.

Sonic shuddered, turning his head towards the sound no matter there was nothing to see at all. "Is someone there?"

No answer came. Instead, for a long-drawn moment silence lingered on around him, then the howl came again and it sounded like it came right from next to him.

Sonic gasped. He didn't want to, it felt stupid and it gave away his position easily to whoever was there, but he couldn't help himself. The dampness of the fog around seemed to have gotten even colder and something leashed onto his ankles. Something cold.

Had the cold, silent darkness seemed alive to him before, now he was sure it was. It was very alive and it had grabbed him.

Common sense and reason got lost to Sonic. All of a sudden he was running full tilt ahead. The danger of running into the darkness ahead of him had become unreal to him. The danger that lurked in the darkness behind him was much more fearsome.

He could hear the howl and sometimes something like footsteps behind him as he dashed into the unknown, blind and deaf and helpless. Running was a natural resort and came on instinct. He didn't think of the walls anymore, or the labyrinth, or his strategy to get out of it. The subtle fear of the unknown in the darkness that had been present for the past hours already had needed just an instant to become the fear of whatever might be _hiding_ in the blackness around.

Sonic no longer cared about what 'out of here' might look like. He wanted away, just away, out of this dark, cold place and the spooky noises. He had to

– _smack_!

The hedgehog groaned when he collided with the cool, flat surface of a wall, but the pain became a distant impression within mere seconds. As he scrambled to his feet on the floor it was already forgotten and nothing kept him from running on.

It wasn't the last wall he hit. A few he grazed just by with an arm, a shoulder, a quill. Others he crashed into head-first, but he didn't think of stopping. Panic had gotten its icy claws on him and it was holding on tight.

Eventually even Sonic couldn't even run anymore and just collapsed on the floor, soaked through with fog and sweat and feeling utterly exhausted. He was starting to be aware of the pain again. It felt like he was hurt all over. Maybe he'd broken something. He couldn't even tell if he was bleeding. Too exhausted to move, he just lay and panted, and when his breathing finally calmed and his heart stopped trying to jump around in his ribcage, he just lay in silent darkness. He listened for any suspicious sounds, but everything was quiet and he couldn't see anything. Whatever had been there was gone now.

With a groan the hedgehog rolled to his side and balled up. For a while there was just the sound of his quills rattling against one another as he shivered, then sleep embraced him with merciful oblivion.


	15. Night Terrors

Silence hung heavily over the house in the Mystic Ruins. Insisting he was tired, Tails had gone to bed early. Of course, he wasn't able to sleep. Instead, he lay in his bed, listening and waiting for the numbers on his alarm clock to finally show a later time of day.

He hadn't heard much of 'Sonic', whatever his name really was. For a while he'd been in the workshop downstairs before he'd come up and Tails had heard him go into Sonic's room. The fox would have liked to know what the stranger had done in the workshop while he wasn't looking, but he'd been too scared to go check it out, in the dark and alone.

What did the guy want? Want from him? He'd stolen the Master Emerald, done whatever to the real Sonic… just to let Knuckles get away with the magic gemstone and follow Tails to his house and pretend he was Sonic. Why would someone do that? It made no sense to Tails at all, and it was making him even more afraid. Why him? What would that person do to him if he found out he knew he wasn't the real deal? Would he kill him?

Tails shuddered under his blankets. He didn't want to know. It was beginning to feel like a really bad dream to him and he wished he could just wake up and crawl into Sonic's bed like when he'd been small and sleep there with his big brother, safe and warm and protected.

But Sonic wasn't here… Instead, there was someone else that looked exactly like him. How was that possible? Sonic didn't have any family. At least, none that was known of… but that stranger could be his twin! Even to Tails, who could claim to know Sonic better than anyone else, they looked identical. At least… unless he focused on things other than the real appearance. Whoever he was, he talked different than Sonic. He moved in a different way. He just _was_ different. And he'd burned that photo. Would he burn Tails, too? Had he burned Sonic?

Sitting up on his bed, Tails wrapped his namesakes around himself. He was scared, more scared than he had been in quite some time. He wasn't a stranger to fear, but in most fearsome situations, he was with friends by his side and they had a plan to work with. Now, he had neither friends nor a plan on how to deal with the situation.

Again he glimpsed at the alarm clock. Ten minutes to midnight. That fake Sonic should be asleep by now, shouldn't he? Careful not to make any noise, Tails slipped out of bed and pulled on his shoes. He tiptoed to the door and quietly opened it, just a slit. Then he stood frozen for a minute, afraid he'd possibly wakened the stranger up. But nothing moved and cautiously Tails fully opened the door, sneaking slowly across the corridor.

He used his spinning tails to avoid the stairs; he knew many of the wooden treads creaked when as much weight as a Flicky was put on them. He'd never considered it a problem before, but now he wished he would have fixed it, because the sound of spinning tails stirring the air seemed incredibly loud in the quite night.

Tails touched down aside of the Tornado, unsurely looking up at it. He'd thought it through hundreds of times already. By himself, he wasn't near fast enough to escape that Sonic imposter if he was just half as fast as they thought he was. And where should he go? The only person aside of Sonic he trusted enough and thought was able to protect and help him was Knuckles. He was probably also the only one who would believe his story… and there was no way he would get up to Angel Island by himself. It was simply too high up. He needed the Tornado.

Of course, taking the biplane brought along a major disadvantage. It would clearly wake the person he wanted to escape from up as soon as he started the engine. No matter how advanced his ring motor was, the airflow around the propeller alone was incredibly loud, especially in a quiet night like this one.

But it was the only way to escape. Tails didn't much like the idea of flying a completely cold plane, but the Tornado faced directly towards the hangar door, thus also at the runway. He considered it would take two or three seconds after the start-up until he could get the biplane rolling, ten until he could be airborne. Should be enough to get out of reach of someone who'd just been jolted out of his sleep, right?

Tails sure hoped it would be. Quietly he opened the large portal and hopped into the plane's cockpit. He prepared everything he could for the take-off without starting the engine, then reached for the keys.

They weren't there. But he always left them in the plane, just in case he had to go somewhere quickly. Like now, for example. Just where were the –

"I take it you are missing these, creature."

Tails whirled around at the sound of the suddenly mechanic voice. He could see only the spiked silhouette of the hedgehog in the dark hangar, standing at the middle of the stairs. He was holding something up that sparkled a little in the moonlight, then pulled his arm back, causing a tingling noise when the keys hit each other – and then he threw the bundle all across the room, through the open door where it kept sailing through the air like shot from a gun until it disappeared behind the cliffs.

Tails stared back at the hedgehog... _person_. "What… do you want from me?", he stammered.

"You will help me harness the seven powers of chaos." The reply came back in the tone of an almost everyday statement… if it wasn't for the underlying threat and the mechanical sound of the voice.

"Who _are_ you?", Tails pressed out, in vain trying to keep the tremble from his voice.

Another, harder shudder ran through the young fox as in the stranger's face a pair of deep red eyes lit up, sending a piercing glow through the dark workshop. "You may have one guess, organic."

* * *

It was dark and silent. Knuckles could hardly hear his own footsteps on the ground or make out the outlines of shapes in the darkness. The air felt cool on his skin, the wet cold creeping through his fur.

The echidna walked slowly. He couldn't see too much after all. It was only when he stumbled against something on the floor that he looked down.

What he had almost fallen over was a near round lump on the floor. On second look Knuckles realized the sharp outlines of spikes pointing out of the ball form, then the feet at the other side of it. It was a person. A hedgehog curled up as tightly as he could.

It was still too dark to make out colors, so Knuckles leaned down to take a closer look. "Sonic?" The hedgehog didn't stir to the nudge of Knuckles' hand against his side. Instead something like a sharp blow of wind through a narrow place sounded from behind.

Knuckles stood and whirled around, squinting his eyes to see sharper through the thick curtain of darkness. But there was nothing behind him and he turned back to the hedgehog on the ground.

But when he looked, the hedgehog's dark shape began to flicker, slowly fading into transparency until he was gone as if he had never been there. Startled and panicked at the sight of his friend just vanishing before his eyes, Knuckles knelt and reached out where he had been, but his hand just sliced through an empty space.

Knuckles stared in disbelief at the blank ground… until a wicked giggle echoed from all around him, sharp and rasping. He shot to his feet and span around on the spot. For a moment he saw nothing, then a pair of deep red eyes flashed from the darkness.

The echidna woke up with a gasp and through wide open eyes stared into the room around him. It needed various seconds until he grew aware of his rapid breath, of the cold sweat covering his body from head to toes and of sitting upright in his bed. Moonlight filtered in through the small window hole in the wall above his head. Knuckles collapsed back onto the bed.

A nightmare? It had all felt so real… He could still hear that laughter in the back of his mind and the image of the curled up body vanishing before him had burned itself into his soul. And those _eyes_...

Groggily Knuckles ran a hand over his face. He knew if the moon had not yet set, it was still several hours until morning. Suddenly he realized that he was still shaking all over and that it was cold. He sat up and searched around for his blanket, finding it knotted into a lump on the floor. He reached to pick it up and wrapped it around his shoulders, shivering into it. It didn't help making him warmer. Not that he really thought there was a chance he'd go back to sleep anytime soon.

Slowly and with effort he dragged himself out of bed, the covers still around him and his body heavy and tired but still tingling with a totally irrational panic left behind by the nightmare.

Knuckles moved to relight his fireplace, fetched a mug and prepared a tea in the heat of the small fire. Then he held the mug with both hands, in exhaustion leaned against the wall next to the fire, sipping the hot tea, trying to warm up in the fire's light and gazing numbly into the flames.

He couldn't remember having many nightmares that had left him as scared as this one. Had he really dreamed about _Sonic_?

Well, actually the hedgehog was a rather common guest in Knuckles' dreams, so were Tails, Doctor Eggman, his robots, even Shadow. Dreams often showed you things from your memory and Knuckles didn't know many people for his mind to remember and include in a dream. Quite often though, Knuckles knew, dreams were random and meaningless. A product of the mind ordering itself during sleep maybe, and most of the time a dream was bizarre and made no sense. Knuckles remembered dreaming one time that Tails had build an hot air balloon and that Sonic had forced him to paint a chili dog on it. In the end, Doctor Eggman had been flying away with it, the balloon had mysteriously morphed into a cone of ice cream that Amy Rose had smashed with her hammer.

As far as Knuckles was concerned, most of his or anyone else's dreams were total and utter nonsense.

This one of a few minutes ago though… it had been terrifying no matter how little scary the events seemed now that he thought back to the dream. While he was in it, something about it had scared the crap out of him. It had nothing in common with the random chains of images most dreams consisted of.

Knuckles let his head drop against the wall in his back. Honestly he didn't want to know why he'd dreamed of what maybe had been Sonic in a dark place. He didn't want to know what had giggled after he disappeared. He just didn't want to ever dream of such burning dark eyes ever again.


	16. Prisoners

When Sonic woke up, he was still curled into a tight ball. Every muscle in his body felt cramped and tense. For a few moments the hedgehog lay still, listening, then he unfurled himself and ended up flat on his belly, arms and legs spread out and his cheek against the floor.

The ground was cool to the touch and it felt surprisingly good. Sonic stayed where he was for quite some time, consciously forcing especially the muscles on the back of his head and his shoulders to go limp. You could keep your spikes erect only for some time until your entire backside cramped up. Sonic lifted a hand and brushed his quills down several times until he'd persuaded them to fully relax. Then he just lay on the cool floor, trying to rest his body and probably get his mind back working.

He needed considerably long for the latter. He had no idea how long he'd been out and the events of last night, or whatever time it had been before he'd fallen asleep, were but a blur to him. If he wasn't so sore all over and had wakened up in any other place but on plain floor in a dark room, he would have been tempted to put it all off as a nightmare. Right now he wasn't even sure how much of it had been a nightmare, after all.

After a while he opened his eyes, staring at the silhouette of the fingers of his right hand that limply lay on the floor next to his face. He moved his index finger a little, drawing it over the ground. Another few moments passed with Sonic staring at his hand in numb stupor, then his dazed mind caught up.

He could see his hand. Not much more than a shape of it, but he could see something. It felt like forever since there'd been anything but total blackness.

The realization that he could see again was almost electrifying. Sonic sat up quickly, wincing briefly when he pulled things that didn't appreciate being pulled, but then he'd forgotten about it and was holding his hands up in front of his face, turning them around as if he'd never seen them before. It felt a little like that to him, anyway. He clenched and unclenched his hands, wriggled his fingers, then looked at the rest of himself. The white gloves and his socks and shoes were much better to make out in the dark than the tan skin on his arms and belly, and the blue fur that covered most of his body was still invisible. But he could see something again and for a few short moments Sonic felt like a happy child that was having a birthday.

When the magic of the moment slowly wore off, the blue hedgehog realized that the fact he could see a bit again meant there had to be light again and he looked around, straining wide open eyes to search for it. Everything left of him was pitch black, but from the right a dim light was pouring over the floor.

Sonic picked himself up, his spirits reviving a little at the prospect of light. Slowly he began walking towards it. The truth was, he wanted to get there as quickly as possible, but his sore body didn't feel like running right now. _It's not that I have a lot of other things to do at the moment_ , he thought.

About ten minutes later he stood in front of a wall, the same high, spotless kind he'd seen way too much recently. But this one had a slit, a straight gash the bit of light that had guided him here was flowing out of. Sonic knocked his knuckles against the wall next to it. It didn't seem overly sturdy…

He stepped back about a meter, gave the wall a challenging glare, then lowered himself to the ground. He wanted out of this creepy place and this stupid wall wasn't going to stand in his way. Hunkering on the floor, he tucked into a spiky ball, giving his body a spinning momentum by jerking forwards and simultaneously pushing off with his feet. The impulse was enough to let his body do one revolution on the spot and when it was almost finished he pushed again, and again, and again, speeding up the rotation on the spot, then he dashed forwards.

The spin dash let him crash into the wall spines first and with a noise like grass splintering it crumbled and gave way. Sonic was flung with parts of the debris, bounced a few times over some kind of floor that felt incredibly springy before running out of momentum and stopping.

He came out of his ball and remained on all fours, blinking quickly. His eyes stung sharply and he could feel water run down his cheeks, but he couldn't see anything but bright light. At first, it scared him, and he wiped his eyes with one hand to try and find out what was wrong with them, then he realized he was just majorly blinded after all the time he'd spent in utter darkness.

Since they were still as useless as before, Sonic closed his eyes for now and instead tried to rely on his other senses. His pointy ears twitched to some quite, gentle tingling sound that seemed to come from all around. Sonic tilted his head. It was a little like the sound the golden rings made when you collected them and their energy was absorbed into your body, just a lot quieter.

Feeling his hands around him, he found the ground he'd landed on was softer than anything else he knew. It felt like a giant fluffy pillow or something and after the hard floor of the dark corridors it felt wonderful.

He sat on the mysterious comfy floor until his eyes stopped hurting and the bit of light that filtered through his closed eyelids didn't blind him anymore, then he cautiously opened his eyes again, just a fragment at first. For another minute he sat blinking until his vision had cleared and his eyes were able to focus on his hands he held up again.

Seeing himself was great and Sonic thoroughly looked at every part of his body. He'd expected to find himself injured after running himself at full speed into various walls, but he didn't find any blood on himself and no bruises darkened his skin or shone through his fur. All he'd sustained from the dreadful episode of last night was a bunch of aching and sore muscles.

If that alone was surprising, Sonic was left dumbfounded when he finally turned his attention to his surroundings. What he sat on looked like cotton. Or one of the spring clouds in Sky Sanctuary Zone. It shifted gently under him when he moved and softly gave way a bit when he pressed a finger into it.

"Too cool…", he mumbled. It were the first words he'd spoken that day and still they didn't feel weird anymore. Quite the opposite, it felt good saying something and hearing his own voice.

As he listened to his words and focused on his hearing that way, the tingling sounds he'd noticed before became apparent to him again and he looked up in curiosity, eager to find out what caused them.

The cottony floor stretched out almost twenty meters in all directions before ending. After just a short gap, another thing like the one he sat on came, another giant cottony cloud or something that looked like one. As far as Sonic could see, more of the cloud-like things spanned out. Through the gaps between them, almost transparent spheres slowly floated upwards, shining in all colors of the rainbow.

_Are that… soap bubbles?_

Sonic stared at the shiny balls. They varied in size from a few centimeters to almost the size of his head in diameter. The hedgehog climbed to his feet, staggering a little as the soft soil moved under his feet. He waded through the cotton stuff until he reached the edge of it, then stopped and watched the bubble things float upwards in front of him. He couldn't really see where they came from, they just appeared out of nowhere and ascended towards the… sky?

Sonic frowned when the idea crossed his mind and angled his neck backwards to search for the sky or the ceiling. What he saw wouldn't quite fit as either of them.

The space overhead was green. Not a bright, shiny green, more like a pale mint. About fifteen meters above the cloud layer, or whatever it might be, thousands of tiny golden rings were floating, rotating gently. The soap bubbles rose up until they reached the height of the rings and popped when they collided with the golden spinning rounds, making that tingling sound Sonic had heard.

Curiously the hedgehog stretched out a hand and reached for one of the bigger bubbles that floated past him. Unlike he'd expected, it didn't pop, instead it just bounced away when the tip of his finger touched it. It hit two other bubbles on the course Sonic had knocked it in that also bounded away, but otherwise the bubble thingies seemed unbothered.

Hopping through the curtain of shiny balls, Sonic got to the next cloud thing and for a while he just jumped around on the clouds and chased the bubbles. It felt good to laugh and jump and not be scared. Finally he dropped down on the middle of a cotton cloud, bouncing up and down on it gently before settling into the softness.

He rested his hands behind his neck, gazing up to the golden rings overhead and sighed. This place was clearly one of the weirdest he'd been to in his life, but it was also one of the most beautiful. He sighed and snuggled deeper into the soft ground. Lying on it felt almost like floating and his sore body gladly took the opportunity to relax completely, and Sonic just watched the flying bubbles, feeling weightless and warm and tired.

 _I'm dead_ , he thought. _I'm dead and have gone to heaven._ Maybe heaven really looked like that. But for the moment Sonic didn't really care what it looked like or where he exactly was. It was nice and comfy and right perfect. The quiet tingling seemed like a melody to him now, a peaceful tune that lulled him into a finally restful sleep.

* * *

Tails shivered, sitting on cool, hard floor, hugging his knees and his double tails wrapped around him. It didn't really help, he still felt freezing. The pale blue light in the base seemed to lower the temperature of the room another few degrees. Had it been as cold when he'd been here the first time? Had Metal Sonic picked this room especially to freeze him? Tails didn't know and he didn't really want to. Maybe he was so cold because he was so tired. Perhaps he should try to sleep a bit anyway?

Biting his lip, the fox softly shook his head to himself. After Metal Sonic had brought him to the underwater base last night, the robot had dumped him into a cell. Well, Tails supposed it had been designed as living quarters for the people working in the base. It consisted of a four by three room and a tiny bathroom connected to it. Just that the room had either never been finished or whoever had build Aquatic Base and later obviously abandoned it had removed all furniture when they went. So Tails had nothing to sit or lie on but the floor and it was cold and hard and he didn't like it a bit.

Even if he had a bed, the two tailed fox doubted he would have gotten any shut-eye during the night. While Metal Sonic had not bothered to tell him what he wanted from him, he had taken obvious pleasure in explaining Tails in vivid detail what he was going to do to him if he didn't cooperate or if the results of this cooperation disappointed him. Tails had been very glad when the robot had left, but the mental image of getting toasted by electroshocks or having his limbs removed by Metal's inbuilt laser cannon were sufficient material to haunt him for the rest of the night and probably a few more.

Resting his chin on his knees, Tails sighed aloud, his ears flattened against his head for so long he was beginning to worry they'd get stuck like that. _I wish Sonic was here. Or Knuckles. Or anybody. Anybody but Metal Sonic._ Not even Dr. Eggman was near as scary. There was always something ridiculous about Eggman, something that wouldn't entirely let you focus on the threat he really was, that he could kill you and that he build horrid machines and traps to do so. There was nothing that distracted from Metal Sonic being one of those horrid creations, no, the most horrid one of all. Tails knew even Sonic had been having nightmares of Metal Sonic at times. _And I'm alone with him! And he wants to kill me and –_

Tails forced himself to take a deep breath. No. He was scared of Metal Sonic. And Metal Sonic _knew_ that. He'd done his best to make him even more scared. But he hadn't hurt him… yet. Metal had said Tails would help him with something. He needed him.

_He needs me. He needs me. He can't kill me._

Tails repeated it in his mind for a few minutes, trying to force himself to believe it. It almost worked, almost toned down his fear, gradually and slowly… until the door at the other side of the room opened and the robot's red, evil eyes stared right at him. The young fox backed deeper into the corner.

"You will come with me now." Metal's voice was a sharp, snarling command. Tails hesitantly crawled to his feet. "Move faster, organic. I don't have all day." The blue robot strode through the room and gripped Tails around the arm, pushing and pulling him out of his room.

Tails blinked rapidly, fighting to hold back the tears. "You're hurting me!"

"I will hurt you a lot more if you don't work well for me." Metal Sonic kept pushing him forwards, but he loosened his grip a little so Tails could feel his fingers again.

"What do you want from me?" Tails had to bring up all his bravery to ask that.

"I require your knowledge to give me access of the seven powers of chaos."

A door opened automatically before them and Tails was pushed into a large, round room. It was as pale blue as most of the base, but it wasn't empty. Various machines were lined up in it and half of the room was crammed full of what looked like tanks, filled with a liquid glowing in changing colors.

Tails stared. "Is that… liquefied energy?"

"Correct. With my superior calculation powers I was able to transfer energy out of millions of rings into liquid form which is easier to store and conserve for my purposes." Metal Sonic had pulled Tails over to a large desk and finally let go of his arm.

The fox rubbed his arm, but his eyes wandered over the table in front of him. It was covered in blue prints, technical data sheets and papers full of equations. Tails frowned. "You want to build a chaos drive? A ring capsule? Or what?"

"Those storages are only suited for tiny amounts of chaos energy. I am going to create the greatest power storage that ever existed." The robot's voice had taken on an almost enthusiastic tone that seriously frightened Tails. "The highest energetic level of chaos can only be stored in its crystalline form."

Tails blinked and did a mental step back. "You… want to build a Chaos Emerald?"

"Negative. This unit has already had possession of all seven Chaos Emeralds, but the energy level was not sufficient enough to get access to the seven elementary powers of the Emeralds."

"The what?"

Metal Sonic reached out with a clawed hand and shoved a collection of paper into Tails' hands. He didn't give him time to read any of it though, instead he summed it up himself. "Data my failure of a creator collected on an ancient civilization's knowledge about the Chaos Emeralds."

"The echidnas?"

"Affirmative. According to this data, certain individuals are capable of using seven special powers one of which is unique to each Chaos Emerald. Some of these powers hold high interest to me. Unfortunately even with the seven Emeralds combined I was not able to access these powers." Metal Sonic sounded angry for a second. "However, my analysis discovered that the same powers the Chaos Emeralds have split out into seven parts are also contained in the highly energetic object referred to as the Master Emerald. You will help me gain the powers I need to rule the universe."

Tails gulped. "If you… if you tell me what you did to Sonic." His voice was weak and small as he said that. He didn't know if he wanted to know the answer. Tails had spent over a day of being scared he'd never see his brother again, and part of the long, cold night had passed imagining Sonic might have been killed by Metal Sonic, that he'd died alone, without someone to comfort him, at this underwater base he'd been so scared of anyways. And once Metal Sonic had come back to the cell he'd left Tails in, the image had been burned into his brain in horridly vivid colours. He'd been unsure if he'd find the courage to ask, but he needed to know, because he didn't know how he'd be able to move on one way or the other with his best friend's fate left in the unknown, exposed for his imagination to fill in the blanks. Certainty, even a crushing one, would be better. Right?

For a moment it looked as if he wouldn't get an answer, and the horror visions of Sonic's fate got company of images of his own premature demise. Had asking this question been worth it?

But then Metal's eyes pulsed up. "I was able to acquire the technology to be able to seal this annoying biological copy of mine in the perfect cage. I have blasted him out of this universe and locked his existence into the largest energy crystal in the world. He shall stay in there for all eternity!" The robot raised a clawed fist up in triumph.

 _Back-track. Think again._ Tails stared. "You sealed Sonic into the Master Emerald and then just gave it away?"

"Correct. But you will never mention his name again from now on. He does not exist anymore. I am the real Sonic!"

Tails inched away from the piercing glow of the furious robot eyes. "Yes, uh, sure…"

"He was weak. He required the assistance of other, equally weak biological creatures to defeat me. Soon I will prove that I surpass him in all fields on my own! And as the beginning of my final triumph, his sidekick will give his knowledge to me and kneel before my superior power!" Metal Sonic still stood in a gesture too closely resembling some of his creator's poses.

Tails still stared at him. He sealed Sonic inside the Master Emerald? Well, Tails knew it was possible. At least he wasn't dead. That alone was enough to let Tails regain some of his lost hopes. Could he, like Chaos and Tikal before, be freed by breaking the gem? Tails didn't know, and Knuckles wouldn't be happy about the suggestion, but he would find a way to save his friend… If he found a way to survive Metal Sonic and whatever crazy plan he was up to. Hopefully, 'he needs me' was really applicable… but as it seemed he didn't only need whatever knowledge Tails possessed that the robot didn't. After his last words, Tails was sure he wanted him for another reason as well. Metal Sonic wanted to be admired. Maybe that would be something Tails could use to his advantage… It was worth a try, anyway.

"You still haven't told me how I can help your… _awesome_ plans," the fox reminded the robot. He tried, but he didn't manage to make that come out quite right.

Metal Sonic finally got his arms back down. "Apparently you have mastered a technology nobody else has yet. You are going to use it for me."

"Well, of course." It almost physically hurt just trying to sound as if he was being nice to Metal. But maybe it'd save him his anger… "If you tell me what you want me to do."

The red optics fixed on him. "It is recorded you have constructed an artificial Chaos Emerald with the same energetic properties as the original ones."

Tails blinked. Slowly he caught up. "I sure have. It isn't quite as powerful as a real Emerald, though…"

"It is sufficient for my purposes," the robot cut in.

"So, uh.." Tails nervously twirled his namesakes when Metal didn't continue. "So you want me to build a Chaos Emerald for you? To use as your energy supply or something?"

"No. My plans go beyond mere energy supply. I will gather up enough energy to finally access the real powers of chaos. The energy will not only be my fuel, but I will be able to use it to become invincible, faster and stronger than anything, invisible as I please. Nothing will be able to stop me!" Tails was sure if Metal Sonic was capable of it, he would have been shaking with insane laughter by now.

"Uh… then what do you want me to build?"

Metal Sonic looked back at him, the red eyes flickering a little. "You will build me copies of the Master Emerald."

"The – Master Emerald?" This is impossible…

"Affirmative. You will build seven Master Emeralds for me. With them, nothing will be able to stop me." He leaned closer to Tails. "Check the equipment of this lab. If you require a device which is not here, I will get it for you. After you explained to me how you are going to work, I will bring you back to your cell and give you food to refuel. Don't work well and you will never need to refuel again."

Tails gulped dryly.

* * *

Rings.

Rings everywhere.

Rings, rings, rings, rings, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnngs.

Sonic slowly tumbled forwards a few steps, then stopped again, gazing around in dazed fascination. He had never seen so many rings in one place. He had walked into a room what seemed but a few minutes ago and it was full of the golden, spinning shiny rounds. It was impossible not to collect them, and Sonic wasn't sure how many he had simply run into by now. It had to be thousands of them, maybe millions even.

The hedgehog slowly turned his head, following the spinning motion the rings did. They were moving around, or the floor was moving, and even if he didn't move himself at all every few seconds another ring plinged audibly as its energy absorbed into his body. His ears were already ringing from the sounds, although they seemed to originate rather from inside his head than outside.

And all this energy… His head was spinning, his whole body was tingling with it and his fur and spines stood on end.

Sonic numbly stared at the sparkles that fluxed around him with every ring he collected. So pretty… The blue hedgehog grinned, playfully jumping forwards, into the sea of rings. Some were flung to the side, but most of them instantaneously absorbed into him. More energy… more buzzing energy…

Yes, he needed more. It felt just too awesome. Sonic laughed as he ran in circles through the rings, faster and faster and faster. He couldn't get tired. He was brimming with ring energy and there was so much of it around it got more and more even if he wasted it!

The second the sonic boom ripped on his quills, Sonic tapped into the light dash. There was no line of rings to follow, just a random bunch chaotically spread out around him. He was pulled through the air, from ring to ring, changing directions so fast he was now entirely dizzy. He just flew around, laughing and weightless and ecstatic.

The buzz of ever new rings plinging into him stopped after a while as the light dash flung him forwards as no ring was momentarily near enough to become a target. The momentum carried on and Sonic shot through the air, arms spread out at his sides and still not touching the floor. I can fly…!

He landed on the floor a few seconds later, tumbling along it head over heels. But it didn't hurt. It was dizzying and fast and incredibly funny. The hedgehog ended up on his back when his momentum finally wore off, then he just lay and laughed for no reason in particular. It was just all too funny. Everything was funny…

Sonic gazed upwards. The sky, or ceiling, or whatever it was, was green. Green… Sonic chuckled, sitting up unsteadily and looking at himself. I'm blue… Wow… For the moment it seemed like the most awesome realization ever.

The hedgehog picked himself up, coming to his feet swaying a little, and decided it was the time for a run. He just took off in a random direction, just dashing into the wind, head on and with a bright grin. Suddenly he totally loved this place. It was so much fun being here…

It wasn't before hours that he got tired of running and just flopped down on a random patch of ground. Numbly he looked himself down. He was exhausted…  
And… What the heck happened?

"Whoa. That was like… overload on rings," he said to the emptiness around. "You can overload on rings. Maybe we should do that to Eggman's robots once." He grinned at the thought of exploding a robot by throwing rings at it repeatedly.

And Tails would love it. Kill it with science. Well, chaos science. Still sciencey enough as far as Sonic was concerned.

Sonic sighed at the thought of his little brother. He missed him. He missed company, and he wanted out of this weird place. Now that the buzz of energy had passed, it didn't seem as bright and funny anymore…


	17. Mist On The Mirror

Flickering shadows danced over the ceiling that arced over the large hallway and Knuckles himself threw a long shadow on the walls and floor that seemed to be creeping after him. The light from the small oil lamp in the guardian's hand wasn't enough to reach farther than ten meters in each direction of the path, but Knuckles knew his way.

The echidna hardly had an eye for the shadows looming in the corners. He wasn't one to be afraid of the dark and currently his mind was elsewhere. He was tired after a night with not near to enough sleep and hadn't really felt in the mood for breakfast.

After the bizarre nightmare he'd been unable to fall asleep for hours and when he'd dozed off still sitting in the break of dawn it had been just to dream something else weird and disturbing. And again, there had been Sonic in the dream. If that wasn't disturbing enough on its own, this time he'd been on the floor of one of the pale blue rooms in the underwater base, lying unmoving in front of the Master Emerald. There had been someone laughing and the Emerald had exploded. Knuckles had woken up then and decided he didn't feel like sleeping anymore this night if meant more weird dreams.

Instead, he'd taken a short walk around the temple and then sat in front of the Master Emerald for a while. Usually being there, feeling its warmth in his back helped to soothe him, but something about it still felt odd and he couldn't place it. But he was starting to think there was a connection and he wanted to find out what it was.

A few minutes later, Knuckles pulled himself out of his thoughts as he entered a large and wide room with high ceiling. He rounded it once, lighting the torches at the walls with the flame from his lamp, then he stood in the middle of the room for a moment. Most of the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with wooden shelves that burst with scrolls and books and even stone tablets. The air felt dry and tasted of the scents of old paper and parchment.

Angel Island's library was one of the things Knuckles considered most valuable out of all he possessed. Hidden in the dark silence of the vast system of underground tunnels, caves and chambers in the island's mountains, the library was one of the few rooms that Knuckles had found containing something more but rare furniture. Deep in the heart of the mountain, the library had survived wars, numerous times the island had fallen and other strikes of misfortune the echidna people had suffered throughout history. Even after their downfall and the fact that all but Knuckles were gone from the planet and island, in the old wooden shelves the knowledge of a long gone era had transcended. A good deal of the ancient parchment scrolls had not withstood the test of time and the ink writing on them had faded until you couldn't decipher it anymore and the pages of the old books were yellowed, sometimes as if glued together or they would fall out of their binding. But on the several thousand pages that were still readable, Knuckles felt a bit of the past had survived, a bit of his ancestors' spirit remained in what they had written down. Whenever he came here, it gave him the feeling of something almost like a magic spell lying over the place.

Slowly the guardian wandered along the shelves. Straying past a large collection on Echidnean history and a good amount of astronomy books, Knuckles found what he was looking for quickly and just a minute later he placed his lamp on a table in the middle of the room and sat down at it sorting through what he had found of his ancestors' studies in dreams and visions.

For hours the only sounds in the library were the occasional cracking noise from the torches and the sounds of pages turning and parchment shifting. Finally Knuckles sat back and rubbed his eyes. They were burning and tired and his neck ached with stiffness. Opening his eyes again, Knuckles looked down on the table and the paper spread over it through the blurriness the rubbing had caused in his eyes.

It wasn't fair to say he had found nothing, Knuckles mused. But he hadn't found too much helpful information either. One of the first books he'd opened still seemed among the most reliable sources of information to him, but it taught him little new. The most useful information Knuckles had gotten out of it was that recurring dreams, or recurring subjects in dreams, could be hints at one's inner fears or wishes but also caused by memories that had left a deep impact on the person. Knuckles could think of various examples for the latter.

He himself used to dream, just occasionally nowadays but more frequently when he'd been younger, of waking up in a dark place all on his own and searching the whole island for people he thought should be there just to never find them. He didn't know who they were. Maybe his parents. But although he didn't remember his early childhood very clearly, the echidna was rather sure that his nightmare of suddenly finding himself left alone on an empty Floating Island originated from something he'd really experienced when he was still to small for it to become a more clearer memory, one he could consciously remember. Since he could not, his subconscious mind sometimes remembered it anyway. But since his current weird dreams didn't really fit into the category of screwed up memory, Knuckles wasn't really any smarter than before reading about it.

The other books and even more so the very old scrolls seemed hardly reliable to the echidna. Most of them dealt with the subject of interpreting dream images and symbols, assuming them either a downright foreboding of the future or at least a revelation of someone's mindset. Knuckles had checked out the things he remembered from his dreams. Apparently, seeing a hedgehog in your dream referred to losing one's soul. The book failed to mention if it meant a feral or Mobian hedgehog, though. According to the same book, dreaming about a friend signified good news though and Knuckles failed to see any connection. Interestingly the book didn't list 'Emeralds', but it mentioned dreams of gems as dealing with matters of spiritual protection, whatever that meant.

When Knuckles finally put the book away, he had found out nothing useful at all. Either, if he was to believe the book, he was having some serious problems, or, which he found more likely at the moment, the stuff written down in there wasn't much else but superstitious nonsense.

Tiredly Knuckles stood and put the scrolls and books back to where they belonged. Compared to them, even the most mysterious and bizarre writings on the Chaos Emeralds were enlightening…

He sat down again and his gaze wandered over to the wall where he kept everything about chaos. Theories, legends of past events involving chaos, works about the interaction between the Emeralds and their effects on chaos sensitive people…

Knuckles stared at the shelves. He was a chaos sensitive person for sure. The Chaos Emeralds… Perhaps there was still a chance to find out if it wasn't him loosing his sanity but the Master Emerald trying to communicate with him and his conscious self failing to understand it. Dreams were subconscious…

With a jolt the echidna stood, pushing the stool backwards so hard it toppled over and fell to the stone ground with a loud crashing noise. He didn't bother putting it back upright. He just picked his oil lamp and left the library in a near jog.

* * *

Ten minutes later, he reached what remained of the original Emerald chamber of Hidden Palace. For a long time, it had been the Master Emerald's hiding place, vault and temple at the same time. It had also hosted the Chaos Emeralds for centuries in the past, before they'd gotten lost long before Knuckles had been born.

The middle of the room formed a pedestal that had originally held the Master Emerald and was now empty. After Robotnik's attack on the Emerald chamber a couple years back, the Hidden Palace had been close to destroyed. The ceiling had come down and several of the carvings in the walls would never be readable again. After Sonic had defeated Robotnik and brought back the Master Emerald, Knuckles had restored the chamber as good as he could. The hole in the ceiling was gone again and the floor was tidy and spotless. For a few more months, during the winter that followed, Knuckles had kept the Master Emerald here again.

But everytime he'd sat guard under the gem, he'd been aware that Hidden Palace would never be what it used to before Robotnik came. It wasn't even that during strong rains drops of water leaked through the ceiling. A broken ceiling could be repaired. But the sanctuary had been breached. You could repair broken ceilings, but not broken sanctuaries.

So when the spring came Knuckles had searched around for a new place to keep the Master Emerald safe. He spent months in the caves and tunnels, digging the glaciers of Ice Cap and examining the blistering grounds of Lava Reef. In the end, he'd realized he was searching for something that didn't exist. Not on the Floating Island, nor anywhere else. Robotnik's robots had already been to all places on the island and as far as Knuckles knew he didn't seem to encounter any trouble going wherever else he pleased on the entire planet. He'd even been to space. After months of search, Knuckles had realized what generations of guardians before him had wishfully ignored: There wasn't any place in the universe where you could hide away something as powerful as the Master Emerald. Heck, to anyone blessed with just a bit of chaos sight it had to shine like a sun, and even to those who didn't belong among the few chaos gifted people, there was always technical equipment that could lead you to the Emerald. No, the Master Emerald, the center of the worlds system of chaos, could not be hidden away successfully.

Once he'd realized that, Knuckles had decided to double back and face the matter full forwards. What you couldn't keep hidden anyway, you could as well place where you had it better in sight and could see the enemies coming. During the next spring, the young echidna had taken on the work of restoring the original Temple of Chaos to a presentable shape. Originally, it had been built – thousands of years ago – as the place to host the Master Emerald as well as the seven Chaos Emeralds. It had served this purposed for centuries – until the chief Pachacamac had started the Great War and tried to take hold of the Chaos Emeralds. It had set the Chaos creature on rampage and wiped out nearly the entire clan. In the end, the temple lay in ruins, Tikal had sealed Chaos along with herself into the Master Emerald and very few echidnas lived on.

Logically, time had taken its toll on the temple during the long years it lay deserted, but putting a lot of sweat and effort into it Knuckles brought it back to a condition that at least spoke of its former glory within a couple of months. Ever since, he kept the Master Emerald there and he couldn't help but think it liked it there. It had felt different to him ever since he'd taken it outside, more vivid. But probably that was just due to the sunlight reflecting in it?

Anyway, nowadays Knuckles still used the Hidden Palace. It had felt wrong to him completely deserting it. Now, whenever had had some in his possession, he used to store the Chaos Emeralds in here. They lay on top of about chest-high pillars and twinkled in their mystic light as Knuckles approached.

At the moment the echidna had three of the seven miraculous gems, the green, the dark blue and the red one. The green was Knuckles' favorite of all seven. It came closest to the Master's feeling. Holding the power of life, it was always gentle and its light soft and warm. Touching it could let a comforting feel of inner peace wash over you. Still, Knuckles knew that Sonic's favorite Emerald was the dark blue one, the Emerald of speed, and the hedgehog used to expertly. Knuckles himself, while usually rather talented at chaos wielding, had never gotten much more but tingling fingertips out of it.

With the red Chaos Emerald however, Knuckles had a complicated relationship. In the old writings, it was described as a moody one, with fiery temper and always hard to see through, and Knuckles could only agree whole-heartedly. The red Emerald was the only one Knuckles had ever burned his fingers on. Mastering its elementary power of truth had been a hard lesson to learn.

There were however things you could only do really well with the Master Emerald and a Chaos Emerald together. Knuckles looked down on the red Emerald, for a moment taking in its glow. It was, in a way none of the others was, mesmerizing. The wicked one. But also the one with the greatest insight.

Carefully the echidna picked it up. "You need to help me," he said quietly.

The Emerald twinkled a little. At least it refrained from burning his hand. Knuckles supposed that was a start.

* * *

"This is not a Master Emerald you're building," Metal Sonic insisted and the glare of his ever glowing eyes seemed an even deeper shade of crimson to Tails.

"T… true." The young fox gulped, holding the half-finished piece of circuit board out at the blue robot.

Metal Sonic fisted a claw. "Explain," he hissed. "And quickly…"

"Yeah, sure," Tails hurriedly started speaking again. "You see, before we can build the Emeralds, we'll need to build the devices that help us doing that."

"What sort of device is that you're holding?" There was a subtle growl in the robot's metallic voice and it reminded Tails how very scared he was of him.

"Uh, it's a part of the unit that will supervise the growing of the Emeralds once we start, specifically the current we feed into the liquid." He pointed at the giant tank with the glowing fluids. It was a lot easier dealing with Metal Sonic and the entire situation if you kept your mind busy with technical details. "We can't 'build' a Master Emerald, or a Chaos Emerald. You can build a ring capsule and a Chaos Drive, but not an Emerald of any kind. They're crystals, and the specific structure that makes a crystal outstanding can only grow on its own. We will use specifically, fine-tuned currents to initiate and control the process of crystallization. You know, like when you put copper sulfate into water, put in a thread and over time bluestone crystals grow on the thread."

"How much time will with this growing process require?" Metal Sonic's arms folded, but he looked less like he was going to kill him right now.

"I don't know," Tails dared to admit. "I have never done anything as large and complex as a Master Emerald before. The fake Chaos Emerald I had grown took something around 40 hours until it was complete. I guess the Master Emeralds will take longer to grow… We'll first grow one to see how it goes and when it works we'll do the others."

"No." In spite of the moment of looking almost relaxed, now the robot's metal first slammed onto the working table. "No! You will grow all of my Emeralds at the same time. I want them at my service as quickly as possible!"

"But… you know how risky that is, right? We're working with amounts of energy nobody has worked with ever before!" For a short moment, Tails' worry to blow himself to bits with these fake Emeralds was bigger than his fear of Metal Sonic.

The short moment however lasted only until the robot's glowing optics drilled into his eyes and Tails could almost physically feel the daggers they shot at him. "No. You build them all at once. And now continue working, fox."

Tails didn't dare saying anything, so he just got back to putting together the device in his hands, trying to look occupied enough for Metal not to notice that he was working slower than necessary. He still hoped someone would come and get him out before he finished his work, before Metal Sonic got seven giant, powerful gemstones to use at his leisure.

Or before the craziness of building seven Master Emeralds in one place became their both doom. Tails had no idea how dangerous this plan really was, but he knew that Metal Sonic had not at all considered the consequences. The one fake Chaos Emerald he'd build a while ago had been able to greatly confuse the system of chaos energy the normal, real seven Chaos Emeralds formed. A system that was based on seven Chaos Emeralds and one Master Emerald controlling, connecting and balancing the whole thing. Tails was sure Knuckles would be able to tell him more about that, but one thing also Tails himself was sure about: Seven Master Emeralds would cause a lot of trouble.

And he was trying his best to delay the day this trouble came down on him.

* * *

He felt like he'd run for hours again. Probably he had, but one lost track of time so utterly and completely in this place without day and night that Sonic wasn't sure anymore. Moreso, he was beginning to doubt his own perception. Was this a dream? He almost couldn't tell the difference anymore.

Now merely walking, the hedgehog turned to look over his shoulder. Behind him was just a blank, open space, an empty plain. Just a minute ago, when he'd run through there, it had not seemed so barren. Was it changing its features as soon as he looked away? "Nothing new for a Special Zone.," the blue hedgehog mumbled. "Just that this one's a broken, stupid – ouch!"

Something hard uncomfortably hit his head and he ended up falling backwards, bruising his tail in the progress. Holding his head, Sonic turned back to the direction he'd been walking in. _Something I maybe should have done anyway. It would have kept me from walking into some… wall?_ The hedgehog's thoughts faltered at the term. What he was sitting in front of was more than just a wall.

It was huge. Sonic stared up against it, one hand still on his head, but momentarily he'd forgotten about the pain. The wall, in lack of a better word, continued upwards as far as he could see. There seemed to be no ceiling, sky, roof or whatever. Just an empty space and the wall towering into it, glazing green and enormous.

Slowly Sonic turned his head. The giant wall went on to the left and right, also into what looked like infinity. The hedgehog shook his head. _Just what is that thing?_

It looked like glass. Green, shiny and polished glass. Sonic stared at it and when he looked back down at the spot on it that was directly ahead of him, a pair of green eyes stared back at him. Sonic blinked, needing almost a second to recognize the hedgehog that sat there on the floor, ears slightly lowered, holding his head and his quills messed up as his own reflection. The green tinted mirror image looked sheepish.

Sonic ran a hand through his spines, brushing them back into the streamlined shapes they usually were, and shot his reflection a grin. "Much better, huh?"

The hedgehog in the mirror grinned back and Sonic found his grin was kind of contagious. He crawled back to his feet and spent a few minutes smoothing down his fur. Vanity seemed pointless in a place with no-one but himself around, but he intended to find a way out eventually and then he wanted to look at least remotely presentable.

When he wanted to check his progress in the make-shift mirror he'd found and looked back at the green glazing wall, his reflection was waving at him. Sonic took a step back, closed his eyes, shook his head, then looked again. The hedgehog in the greenish mirror image stood and returned his stare.

_I'm going crazy, I'm really going crazy…_

_Maybe I already am. Maybe this place doesn't even exist and I'm just seeing all this stuff._

_No, wait._ He reached out a hand and touched the glass-like wall. It felt real enough, hard and cool and smooth, like real glass. _So, this is a real wall. … A real, weird wall. And this is a real reflection of myself._ He hopped around, waved his arms and pulled faces, watching the mirror image doing the exact same things.

 _Awesome. Not completely nutty yet._ Sonic sighed, looking along the wall, trying to decide which way to take now. He didn't want to go back… but in both directions it looked as if that wall was endless.

Maybe he could get through it somehow? He'd broken a wall in here before. Sonic grinned. Time for some action, then. He crouched down, curled up and started spin dashing on the spot, gathering some energy before pushing off and aiming for the wall. Well, aiming wasn't exactly necessary. That thing was impossible to miss.

He hit it spines first and for a second or two grinded against it before his own momentum and rotation bounced him back. He caught himself and skidded to a stop on his hands and knees, looking back up at the wall. The plain, shiny surface bore not a single trace.

The hedgehog narrowed his eyes. He'd have to try harder then.

Several spin dashes, homing attacks and flying kicks later, a defeated blue hedgehog sat on the floor again, glaring at the wall. It didn't break. He couldn't do a single bit of damage to it. Just how thick was that stuff?

With fleeting motivation Sonic got to his feet again. His head ached and the roots of his quills hurt from hitting the wall and bending against its resistance. In short, he wasn't keen on another attempt smashing through here. Not right now, at least. Instead, he knocked just careful knuckles against the wall in his way. It sounded dull. Not like he'd expect glass to sound. More like a rock of sorts.

 _Whatever._ Sonic sighed again, scratched behind his ear, looking left and right before turning to the wall again, facing his reflection. "What do you think?"

Just as expected, the mirror image didn't answer. Instead, it blurred as someone has poured water over it, and then it was gone.

Sonic blinked, took a step away from the wall, and just continued to blankly stare at it. The reflection was gone. Like, really gone.

 _Maybe I'm dreaming. I must be dreaming_. The hedgehog reached for his arm and pinched himself. _Ouch! Okay, not dreaming_.

He closed his eyes. Counted to ten slowly. Looked again. The reflection was still gone, but instead of it, the glazing plain color of the wall started to melt again, like the surface of a lake stirred by the wind.

Suddenly the green was gone and he could see through the glass or whatever it really was. It was like a window. He saw a city, with skyscrapers and street signs and cars. Then the image shifted again and when it stilled the buildings had toppled, water gushing out of broken windows. Between two of the buildings, the water stirred and a figure began to shape up from it, piercing eyes in a serpent-like head staring right at him. Sonic jumped when it lurched towards him, but the image blurred again and it was gone.

Gasping, the blue hedgehog stared at the back to normal, blank wall. _What was that? Was that Perfect Chaos? It shows the past then?_ "Are you some kind of fancy crystal ball? Eh, wall?"

No new images turned up and nothing replied to his question.

Sonic frowned. He stood still and waited for minutes, but no new pictures showed on the wall and the hedgehog decided he'd wasted enough time here. On a whim he picked the direction to the left and began to walk alongside the freaky wall. Hopefully it would lead him somewhere.

* * *

Knuckles inhaled the cool air slowly, sitting cross-legged on the stony ground of the Emerald shrine's top. The red Chaos Emerald lay on the floor in front of him and to his left the Master Emerald was pouring its soft green light over the altar's summit.

The guardian deliberately held his breath for a second before letting it out very slowly and concentrated on relaxing his body and mind. If he wanted to tap into the Chaos Emerald's power, he had to clear his mind first. Given that he was lacking sleep and not entirely feeling himself that alone seemed a complex task to him at the moment. He tried to concentrate on what he'd seen in the weird dreams; he needed to be able to hold on to the pictures once he started.

With a brief gust the wind picked up, blowing Knuckles' dreadlock-quills to the side. For a moment he closed his eyes, listening to the sound of the wind until he felt he was ready to tackle the Emerald.

He opened his eyes and picked up the crimson glowing stone, holding it in his right hand. With his left, he reached for the Master Emerald and pressed his flat palm softly against its surface. A tingling sensation traveled from his hand through his body and the Chaos Emerald he held in the other hand suddenly felt a lot warmer.

Knuckles turned his eyes towards it, staring at the top facet. He didn't blink, just gazed at the glazing crystal. Finally its surface seemed to blur before his eyes and his gaze melted into what lay below.

Unlike the others, the red Emerald was a mess. Maybe it was the one that was most wicked chaos of them all. Beneath its surface the red glow seemed to consist of a thousand of strands of energy, crisscrossing crazily so they seemed to form a tight knot. Each strand was a way to take and if you followed the wrong one it would lead you on and on, ever further astray into a crimson labyrinth, until you'd get equally lost in the Emerald and your own mind.

Knuckles knew not to trust the gem. It knew the truth, in the chaos sort of way, gave you access to the truth inside of you. But it didn't do it out of kindness.

The echidna waited, patiently looking at the knot of chaos energy before him, felt the Master's pulse against his other palm. He focused on it until one of the strands briefly flickered in the Master Emerald's light, concentrated on it and began following it down deeper into the Chaos Emerald's red glow.

He progressed cautiously. The red Emerald's power granted you a look inside your heart and soul, if you wanted to into the deepest part. But going there was critical; the old legends told of those who had ventured too deeply and gotten lost inside their minds because their truth was too complex for them to grasp or too fascinating to let go again.

Knuckles didn't plan going that far. The strand of energy he'd picked stayed near the surface, like most others would do as well. He focused his concentration on it until the rest of the energy faded from his attention. As a distant echo he could hear the Master Emerald's humming.

Keeping a tight hold of the Chaos Emerald's guiding string of energy, Knuckles tried to bring the images from the dreams before his inner eye and after a second the memories flashed before him, bright and colorful and disturbingly alive. Knuckles forced himself to keep his stand and watch them all again, realizing he'd not forgotten so much even. Before they could fade from his memory again, he dived a little deeper into the Chaos Emerald's glow.

_I know there's something to these dreams. Show me what they mean…. Please…_

For a moment there was just a twinkle from inside the red Emerald.

_Come on…_

The crimson light seemed to brighten and the warmth increased to where it was almost painful. A picture of the Master Emerald flickered in midst of the redness.

_Yes, I know, it has to do with the Master Emerald. What happened to it?_

Before him flashed the picture of the underwater base as he'd seen it in his dreams, then of Sonic lying unmoving on the floor, then there was a bright green light and the images flooded Knuckles' mind more quickly than he could follow.

_Stop! No, wait, just don't rush it like that. Just… let me see what is wrong with the Master…_

The confusing blur of rapidly changing images vanished and instead he saw Sonic. He stood in front of what looked like a wall of sorts, consisting of some green crystalline material of dimensions that bordered on infinite. The blue hedgehog leaned against the wall with hands next to his head and his nose all but pressing against the wall as if it were a window he tried to look through.

 _Sonic… What are you doing there?_ For the moment Knuckles forgot what he saw was just a vision and that it wouldn't answer him. He moved closer, until he was next to the blue hedgehog, but his friend didn't notice he was there. He was now banging a fisted hand against the wall, ears flat against his head. He looked… frustrated, close to desperate even.

Knuckles felt a pang at seeing those drooping ears, but he wasn't given the time to find out what was wrong with Sonic. He was moving past him, closer and closer to the wall. It was as if it was pulling him in and the echidna would have closed his eyes had he been able to do so. As he was not, he was forced to just watch himself… not colliding with the wall, but phasing right through it. What had been a barrier for Sonic clearly wasn't a barrier for him.

He was moved out of the green wall and bright sunlight welcomed him. From atop the Emerald altar, Knuckles could overlook the lush green meadow and the colorful forest below. He whirled around, staring at the large, glowing green gemstone before him.

_I… came out of the Master Emerald…_

The Emerald flared, and from the center of its brightness a pair of green eyes stared at Knuckles with a look that was almost pleading. Then they were gone and the Master Emerald's image was gone and all Knuckles saw was the red glowing Chaos Emerald lying in his palm.

_What…?_

Knuckles stared down on it numbly. He felt drained now, during the first few seconds of being back to reality gravity's drag seemed cruel, his heart was thumping in his chest for reasons he didn't understand and his hands felt sweaty in his gloves. The echidna blinked strainedly; his eyes stung and felt dry and he had no idea how long he'd held them open. Only when he placed the red Chaos Emerald on the ground before him and let go of the Master Emerald as well he noticed the burn on his hand.

He shot the Chaos Emerald a glare it didn't seem to mind, but other than that Knuckles hardly spent any thoughts on the pain. Warily he looked at the Master Emerald. _What I just saw… Does it mean that? But Sonic can't be inside the Master… can he?_


	18. Refraction

The damn crystal wall dragged on endlessly in both directions. When he looked back it was exactly the same as looking forwards. Nothing changed. Not at all.

Sonic had tried running again, racing along that green solid barrier he couldn't get through. It didn't help. No matter how fast and long he ran, he didn't seem to make progress. Had he been lost before, now he was stuck as well. Caught in a cage he couldn't even see, without bars to try smashing.

When hours of running didn't help him at all, growing desperation got Sonic to try breaking out again, spin dashing himself into the wall repeatedly. Like the first time, it was fruitless.

Now he lay on his side on the floor in front of the wall, numbly gazing at it. He had exhausted himself and was beginning to think it didn't matter what he tried to escape from this crazy place.

_I'm stuck. No matter what I try, I don't get any closer to getting out of here._

The wall blurred again, the green melting away to reveal the image of what looked like one of Eggman's mad research labs. In the middle of it, something that could be a large force field of sorts concealed something that was glowing in blindingly bright light. Next to it, on a board with control screens, emergency alerts flashed 'OVERLOAD' in neon letters. For a moment, Sonic could see a figure next to the force field, then it too was glowing in blinding brightness, then the whole image blew up, the shards of it scattering against what looked like the other side of the mysterious wall.

For a moment Sonic stared, then nothing happened, and the hedgehog was about to turn away when a new image flashed up, this time showing a mountain slope covered in snow.

Sonic groaned and rolled over, facing away from it. The weird reflections had shown him various seemingly random things, rarely even something he remembered seeing before. But the picture of a beautiful mountain zone, probably with people skiing and having a blast wasn't what he wanted to see right now.

' _Cause if this keeps up I'm not skiing anywhere again. I'm a prisoner in a freaked-out place and I don't even know how I got here_.

Maybe he'd never see his friends again. Or the outside world. The real world, with normal sky and sun and trees and…

Sonic swallowed dryly, the uncomfortable lump back in his throat. _What if I never get out?_

He blinked slowly. He'd never thought he'd think like that…

* * *

 _It's impossible._ Knuckles shook his head to himself for the hundredth time. _It just can't be. No-one can be inside the Master Emerald. How would you even get there? No, you just can't be inside the Master Emerald, no way._

_But… Tikal was inside there. And Chaos, too._

Knuckles groaned. He'd been to the point already, several times even. He knew that Tikal, an Emerald priestess from a far past, had in an act of desperation sealed herself along with the water creature Chaos into the Master Emerald. She had thought it the only way to stop Chaos' mad anger from destroying the world.

_But Sonic is not like her. How could he seal himself into the Master? And why would he do that?_

The echidna shook his head. Sonic had done many mad things in the time Knuckles knew him, but nothing that mad. The only person mad enough to do something like that would be Dr. Eggman or someone of his mindset.

 _What if Eggman or someone else sealed Sonic into the Mater Emerald?_ Again, Knuckles shook his head. Would Eggman even know how to do something like that? Aside of a few attempts years ago, he hardly bothered with the Master and preferred taking the Chaos Emeralds for his crazed schemes _._

But the idea wouldn't leave the echidna alone again. The Chaos Emerald had revealed it. What if the Master's message, one it kept trying to communicate to Knuckles in various ways for almost a week, what if this message really was 'Sonic is inside the Master Emerald'?

What was he going to do now? If Sonic really was inside the Emerald, purely hypothetically speaking… could his presence be the reason for the Master's energy feeling different, which led to Knuckles himself feeling odd… and maybe having enough troublesome influence that Knuckles had had such problems understanding the Emerald's message?

 _He can't be inside the Emerald. He just can't._ Knuckles looked up at the Master Emerald's shining form. _What if he is?_ The image from the vision came back to Knuckles, the image of Sonic standing there, desperately trying to get through that wall. Desperately trying to get out?

Knuckles shook himself. He had to get him out if he really was in there. He was his friend! And even if he weren't… He was the guardian. Could he leave someone inside his Emerald if they were stuck there?

The guardian's job was to protect the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds from harm and abuse, but it was also to prevent that the Emeralds didn't cause harm themselves. Would Sonic be harmed by being trapped inside the Master? Knuckles grimaced unhappily. He'd not looked exactly content with his situation, had he?

Unsurely the guardian looked at the Master Emerald. _But how am I to get him out?_ _I can't just break the Master!_ Knuckles sank down on the stairs, head in his hands. He didn't know what to do at all.

* * *

He didn't know when he'd fallen asleep. Actually, he only realized that he must have fallen asleep in the first place when he awoke curled up on the hard ground, stiff and aching and still tired.

Sonic groaned, sitting up just because the floor was uncomfortable to lie on. He rubbed his eyes and righted his quills carefully, stretching a little but not really motivated to stand up and go anywhere. It was not that he really _could_ go anywhere. At least, he'd failed to _arrive_ anywhere yet.

Yesterday's desperation had lifted only slightly and Sonic sat and just stared blankly at the green wall before him. He hated that thing…

As if it felt irritated by his disliking for it, the green stirred again and shifted away like it used to when it was about to show one of its randomly spouted image sequences. Sonic didn't look away this time, he just hugged his knees to his chest and rested his chin on them, gazing at the forming picture.

A second later, a red echidna was staring back at him. The green tint had not disappeared entirely this time, just turned almost transparent. Behind it, the echidna stood with his arms folded on his chest, a thoughtful frown on his face. And he was still looking right at him.

"Knuckles? Hey, Knuckles!" Sonic stood and waved his arms. Could he see him? "Knux!"

The echidna, his red fur looking odd through the green layer between them, leaned closer still frowning and now squinted his eyes as if searching for something too small or too far away to see properly.

"Knuckles?" Sonic hurried up directly to the crystal wall, leaning his hands against it and moving his face so close to it his nose all but pressed against the cool surface. "Knuckles, I'm stuck here!"

His friend was still looking straight at him. His lips moved, but Sonic couldn't hear anything of what he was saying. The echidna reached out a hand and the flat palm of his large hand brushed against what looked like the other side of the glass. For another second he looked right at Sonic, then he retracted his hand and turned away.

"No, don't go!" Sonic pounded his fists against the wall. "KNUCKLES!"

The guardian faltered, turned back around, looked at him again.

Sonic stared back for just a moment. _He can hear me. I don't know where I am or where he is, but he can hear me_. "Knuckles, listen. I'm caught in some really weird place and I can't get out!"

Knuckles tilted his head, again reaching out for the wall, but his image was blurring away, the colors fading into the default green.

"No! He could hear me! Give me back that – hole! You… damn… stupid… crazy… wall…"

The wall didn't listen and already the picture of his friend had vanished completely. Sonic let his forehead drop against the cool surface. _No._ "He could have helped me maybe. Why do you hate me, wall?"

The wall was silent and Sonic closed his eyes. _I'm screwed_ …

* * *

The afternoon sun was reflecting in the Master Emerald's glazing facets. Knuckles stood up; he'd sat in front of it on the hard stone so long he felt stiff all over. Hours had passed, he'd meditated and thought and stared into the Master's green glow.

He was still staring at it now, but the anxiety had driven him to his feet. _What am I gonna do? Please, Master Emerald, Controller of Chaos, tell me what I'm supposed to do now…_

The large gemstone sparkled in the sunlight. Knuckles rested his palm against it, wincing as his hand felt still sore, and sighed. _Please…._

The Emerald's glow increased in intensity and Knuckles felt gentle warmth at his hand and the sting the Chaos Emerald had left there faded into a soft and familiar feeling that spread from his hand to his entire body. A strange calm washed over the echidna for a moment, then the picture of Sonic and the wall flashed before him again.

"You… really want me to do it…?"

The Emerald's light had reduced to its idle glowing and the sensation it had cast over him was gone. Knuckles looked at it for a long moment, the memory of the vision and dreams clear in his mind. He went through his thoughts again, everything he'd gone over in the past hours.

 _I have to do it… I have to save Sonic and I have to save the Master Emerald._ Knuckles fisted his hand. If he was right, both of them were in risk.

For almost a minute the red echidna stood gazing at his reflection in the Master Emerald, then he became suddenly aware of his fisted hand. Unsurely he looked at it. _Can I really do that, just because I think Sonic's in it?_

The Emerald's energy gave another pulse that echoed in Knuckles' ears and he harshly realized how off-tune it sounded. "I'll do it," he said, more to himself than the Emerald. He needed to hear the decision to be sure of it. "I'll do it," he repeated, more firmly this time.

He flexed his fingers. Prepared to do it, to break the Emerald. Now. But ... what if this was wrong? What if he was doing the wrong thing, what if he didn't understand the message correctly?

Long minutes passed and Knuckles went through everything again, everything that had happened since he'd come back to the floating island. How he'd thought he was sick, how he'd zoned out, how the Master's energy felt different and wrong, the nightmares he'd had, what the Chaos Emerald had shown him.

Again, he looked at the Master Emerald, at his clenched fist, at the Emerald. He drew a slow breath. He'd made his decision, hadn't he?

For a second the guardian closed his eyes and something akin to a prayer flashed through his mind. _Please, let this be the right thing to do._ What'd he do if he broke the Master because of a phantasm…?

No. What would be if he wasn't falling for something like a hallucination was worse than a broken gemstone, no matter how powerful and sacred. He was the guardian. And the guardian's job was to not only protect the Emeralds from abuse. It was rather, in the original idea, about protecting people by protecting the Emeralds. But the Emeralds could not be put above people. Never. That wasn't the idea. It had never been.

Knuckles nodded to himself, doubt pushed aside. He tightened his fist a little more, exhaled, and punched.


	19. Too Real

Sonic stood with his arms folded on his chest, green eyes firmly set on the infinite wall. He'd ran around a bit rather aimlessly, burned off some frustration. It was a personal rule he'd finally remembered. If you had time to worry, then run.

He'd ran a lot, and like often when he did this kind of thing, after a few minutes with his feet pounding the ground, things didn't feel so bad anymore. It was a little as if his problems stayed behind at the sound barrier. Maybe problems were slow and couldn't keep up with the fastest thing alive for long.

Sonic involuntarily grinned at the thought. In an odd sort of way, it made sense. More than most things he'd encountered during the past days.

But after clearing his head with a good run, the hedgehog had made a decision. He wasn't going to let this stupid wall get him down anymore, neither this whole weird place. He'd been stuck in a story book before, he'd traveled to the past and future… and wherever he was now, he'd get out of here.

 _Deal with it, wall._ Sonic's eyes bore their gaze into the crystalline barrier in what was almost developing into an odd staring contest. So far, somewhat reassuringly, the wall wasn't actually staring back. What didn't mean it couldn't.

The blue hedgehog stood still for another minute, hoping he could get the wall to react through simple persistence. If you kept staring at people they usually reacted rather quickly. Would the wall get mad at him?

When the plain green actually stirred finally and began to reveal an image Sonic was almost startled by it. He frowned and narrowed his eyes, squinting to make something of the blurry shapes just beginning to outline. A few seconds later, he knew what the wall was picturing.

"The Master Emerald…"

This wasn't like the other stuff the wall had shown. The images were so clear, like he could stretch out a hand and snatch the Master Emerald out of the air.

 _Knuckles would be so mad at him for snatching it, though._ Sonic grinned.

The image of the Master Emerald fit better with the wall than any other picture he'd seen in it. It was almost the same color, just that it appeared brighter due to the glow.

Sonic wasn't through with his observations yet when the Master Emerald's image flared in a blinding flash of light. There was a loud, cracking noise that shook the floor he stood on and the wall crumbled into a million pieces.

Unfortunately, Sonic barely had a chance to be glad the obstacle was gone. The falling crystal debris was raining down on him, he felt a sharp pang of pain, and the world was gone.

* * *

Breaking an Emerald is not really a matter of force. Force is a part in it, as it is in most things one can set out to accomplish, but it is in no way the most significant.

There is the matter of how you break it, too. If you go about it the wrong way, either nothing will happen, or disaster is upon you. The same can be said about the force you need, really. Either nothing happens, or the worst. There is a very fine line between the two, a very fine balance, and everything lies in getting it right in the one attempt you have.

If you take a hammer and chisel and set out to break apart a large rock to make a sculpture, if you keep hacking away at it, chances are you will dent or scratch it a little on the surface, chances also are high you will tire yourself out before you get anywhere. If you use enough brute force, you will probably succeed in breaking the rock, but into random tiny chunks, not in any way you can use. There is a difference between breaking and destroying. Only if you use the right, careful amount of force in the right manner, you can get what you need.

Rumours say the Master Emerald pieces scatter whenever it breaks. Knuckles knew differently. They scatter when it is broken in the wrong way under too much force, be it internal or external. If you knew that, you could use it on purpose. Knuckles had done so before.

His main problem at the moment was that is a lot easier to slightly step past a line if you know where it is than to elegantly dance exactly across it and never take a wrong step in either direction.

Sometimes he'd mused if the sort of breaking he aimed for shouldn't be referred to as 'taking apart', because the goal was to be able to quickly put it back together, but a term as tame-sounding as that in no way described the cruelty of the act itself.

The sound of a breaking Master Emerald was a sound like no other. It wasn't exactly loud. Any exploding Eggman robot, any shouting person he knew was louder than that sound the Master Emerald made when splintering into little pieces of itself. And yet, there wasn't any sound that hurt more in Knuckles' ears than this one.

Actually, it didn't only hurt in his ears. It hurt in his whole body, as if he himself was being splintered along with the Emerald. As if a not insignificant part of his very soul shattered, and he could hear and feel the creaks slowly, creepily working themselves through the powerful gemstone and his mind alike, crack after crack breaking it open. One crack became two, two became ten that frayed again and again until there were hundreds of them, until the Emerald fell apart.

The second it did, the noise stopped and the silence that lingered for a brief instant in the aftermath of what had just happened was almost as painful as the cracking sounds tearing through his skull. However, the silence was there for just a short moment, a tiny breather.

Until he could hear the shards.

It was as if every one of them was screaming without making a sound, but 'scream' was the only word Knuckles could ever find that was somewhat suited to describe it. They needed to be brought back together. _He_ needed to bring them back together. It was a feeling like thirst for someone about to die of dehydration. He really _needed_ it. So close to all those screaming shards, so close to their powerful calls to just put them back together and restore the Master, it was hard work to think anything else than following their command and Knuckles had to put in all his willpower to resist it.

His hand was still curled into a hard fist and now the guardian finally opened his eyes again. The brightness was gone, had left behind just a soft, fading glow of green coming from the heap of shards.

And on top of this heap lay, face buried into them, the spiky shape of Sonic. It had worked, and Knuckles almost didn't believe it.

But he didn't have the time to consider what he did or did not believe. The Emerald was broken, and the island was falling. You wouldn't have needed to be the guardian to feel it, the nauseating lightness in the stomach. Angel Island was a giant piece of rock on a six kilometers free fall.

Knuckles didn't exactly know how long it took for the island to reach the surface. He had never counted the seconds when it happened. He just knew that it fell _fast_.

Hastily the red echidna covered the one meter he'd been standing away from the heap of Master Emerald pieces and leaned down to the hedgehog on top of them. Sonic stirred when he touched his arm, but he didn't seem to understand what was going on, and Knuckles didn't have the time to allow him to catch up. He slipped his hands under the blue hedgehog's armpits, lifted him up and set him down two meters from the glowing remains of the giant Emerald, then he quickly returned to the gem.

How much time had passed since the Master had broken? Five seconds? Ten? Knuckles didn't know. He could only hope he was being fast enough.

Drawing a shaky breath and closing his eyes again, the echidna finally allowed himself to follow the shards' cries. Just like he hardly _consciously_ knew how to break the Emerald, he wasn't quite able to say how to fuse it back together. It just worked, in some way that was based on nothing much more than instinct. It was like trying to think about how you make your heart beat. It just _happened_.

Just like breaking it, restoring the Master Emerald wasn't something to happen in silence. Each of the dozens of pieces made a kind of clicking sound when they were fitted back together, but it was nothing in comparison to what sounded out of the Emerald once it was fully back in one piece.

It was _singing_. Like the ringing of a thousand tiny bells from inside of it. It wasn't loud; it was a soft, gentle melody. The most lovely and beautiful sound Knuckles knew. It levitated through the very air around him, slowly rolled in waves into the ground beneath his feet as the island started rising again, and caused his body to tingle all over. He could have spent forever just standing and bathing in it.

There was just one thing that kept him from doing it. A nagging mixture of curiosity and worry.

Knuckles' eyes flew open and he turned around again, searching Sonic. The hedgehog hadn't moved away from where Knuckles had more dropped him than anything else. He'd picked himself up onto his hands and knees, face held down and slowly shaking his head. "Sonic?"

The blue hedgehog slowly lifted his head and turned it to him, squinting up at the guardian, but it took almost five seconds until something lit up in the green eyes. "Hey, buddy! You…" Sonic giggled suddenly. "Man, stop… _spinning_ … will ya?" He had lifted his right hand trying to wave at Knuckles in comical greeting, but the movement upset his balance and he flopped forwards and to the side.

"Hey, are you okay? Sonic!" Knuckles knelt at his side. He totally didn't know if being sealed into the Master Emerald did you any harm. And if it did, he had no idea how to deal with it. "Sonic, look at me."

Sonic was trying to sit back up, but wasn't really successful with it. The emerald eyes were glazed and strangely out of focus when he looked at Knuckles again. "I'm tryin'… but there's two of you kinda… Looks odd, heh."

If he wouldn't know better, Knuckles would have said Sonic was drunk or something. His voice was slurred, his coordination was totally screwed and apparently his eyes didn't work so well either. "Uh-huh… Just hold still for a moment."

"… Okay." The hedgehog chuckled a little as if Knuckles had said something funny, but he lay back on the ground, looking up at the clouds.

Knuckles himself decided to try and check if there was anything external, something you could see, that would explain what was wrong with his blue friend. He started at the head, since there was quite obviously something wrong with it…

But from what he could see, there were no signs of injury or anything abnormal. The echidna extended a hand to feel over his head for possible bumps or something, but there was nothing. When he withdrew his hand however, he spotted red stains of blood on his white glove. For a moment he stared at it, rubbing over the stains. It was still wet… but it wasn't from his head.

Remembering where else he had touched the hedgehog, Knuckles switched his attention to Sonic's shoulder and this time he did find something. On various spots on the left shoulder and halfway down his side, there were small cuts and deeper looking gashes oozing blood into his blue fur. It was pretty clear where they came from, in most of them sharp pieces of metal were still sticking.

"How'd you get that?"

"Huh?" Sonic tilted his head so he could look at him, one eyelid drooping lower than the other one. "Get what?"

"That metal wreckage stuck in your pelt? Doesn't it hurt?" Knuckles frowned. It totally _should_ hurt…

"Uh… what hurts?" Sonic blinked, looking even more confused now.

"Forget it for now." Knuckles shook his head to himself. It would help a lot if Sonic was _sane_ – or at least as close as he usually got to that condition - and could answer his questions… He'd have to figure things out by himself as it seemed. Could someone get hurt like that while locked inside the Master Emerald? Uh … No idea? Knuckles audibly sighed to himself.

"What's wrong, Knux? You in trouble?", Sonic asked drowsily, but there was something like honest care in his tone.

"You're my trouble, as usually…", the echidna mumbled absent-mindedly.

Sonic's ears went flat. "What'd I do wrong…?", he trailed sadly.

 _Oops_. Knuckles blinked, he wouldn't have thought Sonic would get what he was saying, or take anything of it personally. Sonic _never_ took things personally… But probably the current circumstances were just different. "Nothing," he said hurriedly. "Really, I didn't mean it. Okay?"

"Hmm." Sonic nodded eagerly, the triangular ears tipping back upright and he smiled stupidly.

Good. The patient's happiness restored for now. That left finding out what had caused his lousy mental condition. And where those cuts came from.

Knuckles shifted a hand under Sonic's shoulder to lift and turn him a little so he could look at his back. The wounds extended to there, also with the same small pieces of metal stuck in some of them. Directly below his short neck, Knuckles spotted something else though and carefully pulled it out.

"That's… like… an arrow? A dart?" The echidna frowned at the thing. It was short, about the length of his thumb, with three small feathers at its end and a hollow needle at the tip. The body consisted of some kind of tiny tube. Droplets of a transparent liquid clung to the tube's walls.

For a few seconds Knuckles just stared at the syringe arrow thing. Then he looked at Sonic, gazing up at the blue sky with a blissful, but tired grin, and back at the syringe. Poison. Or drugs, rather. That explained why he was so out of it. It didn't quite explain what happened overall, though. How do you get dozens of pieces of metal stuck in your side? It looked as if someone had shot them at him.

 _Shot_.

_Flying around stuff._

… _Explosion_.

The pieces of the puzzle fit together slowly. Sonic really had been in the explosion, back in that underwater base. It was barely a week ago but it felt like so long.

Again Knuckles gazed at the syringe. He'd seen Sonic lying unmoving, in front of the Emerald, in that base. In his dream. Like he'd seen him at the other side of the gem's surface, or whatever. How much of that was dreams? How much of it was actually real?

Knuckles suppressed a groan. One thing was for sure at least. No matter what had happened, Sonic still had those wounds he'd obtained in an explosion Knuckles thought he'd been in about a week ago. And they were looking like they were fresh, just a couple minutes old. Did time pass inside the Master Emerald? Again, Knuckles didn't know, but Sonic was still bleeding, not much, though, but he should better patch up the hedgehog first and _then_ torment his brains some more.

Having made this decision, the guardian noticed he could have been faster about it. He was sitting here, staring at Sonic bleeding instead of doing something about it since the hedgehog clearly wasn't in any shape to do it himself.

"Hey Sonic?" The echidna carefully nudged his friend. Right now Sonic looked about to fall asleep.

" _Yeah_ …?"

"What do you say we head over to my place now and I'll take care of your shoulder?" He tried a smile.

Sonic frowned. "What wrong withit?"

Knuckles shrugged. He'd established by now Sonic was totally out of it; he couldn't quite expect him to remember a statement that had been made something like a minute ago. "There are some nasty little pieces of stuff stuck in it, you know."

"Oh." Sonic blinked slowly. "O…okay."

Knuckles nodded, eying the blue hedgehog. If he couldn't even properly sit on his own, walking without help was out of question. "Fine. Then come on, we'll take a nice little walk across my nice little floating island, okay?"

"Yup." Sonic grinned, not seeming to mind when Knuckles got a good grip on him and put him on his feet. The guardian had to quickly loop the hedgehog's arm around his shoulders to keep him from falling down again. "Ah sink ah can fly, Knux…"

"I'm sure you can. Do you mind if we try it some other time?" Knuckles slowly and carefully started walking them down the stairs. He was glad when they reached the end of them… maybe he should better take the quick way out and sling Sonic over his shoulder like the dead weight he was...

"Hey, Knux?"

"Yes?"

"Ah've been meanin' ta tell ya somethin'…" Sonic was visibly straining himself to look at him.

"Just go ahead." The echidna wasn't quite sure what great revelation he was in for, but he was more intent on getting them over to his houseroom than hearing it. Anyway, it didn't actually hurt letting the hedgehog spout nonsense. It wasn't exactly his fault for once.

What Sonic did spout however wasn't quite the kind of nonsense Knuckles would have expected. "Ya knoww, directly next ta Tails, you're like ma favorite person," Sonic said slowly. "Really, if I had just one piece of chili dog in the world, ah'd share it with you'n Tails. Even if ah was hungry…"

Knuckles blinked. While it was clearly a statement he'd only made because he was totally intoxicated, that also made it quite an honest statement. And no matter the weird way he had put it, something about those slurred, jumbled words made Knuckles feel strangely warm. "Uh, thanks, I guess."

"Heh." Sonic giggled a little. "Yo, Knux?"

"What's it?"

The hedgehog pointed his free hand at the sky. "This cloud looks like Eggman, huh?"

Knuckles tilted his head upwards, but neither of the clouds above their heads bore anything like even a distant resemblance to the crazed scientist. Yet, an indulgent smirk played around his lips and he replied softly. "Yeah, it totally does."

* * *

Thousands of bubbles were rising up from the center of the tank filled with the liquid chaos energy. There were seven tanks in total in the large laboratory and every one of them was glowing brightly enough to light a room much larger even than this one. Tails would have loved to have sunglasses to protect his eyes from the glare. As it were, he didn't have any and didn't see much more but blinding brightness when he looked at the tank. Something about it still acted like a magnet to his eyes and he kept staring back at the glow, the bubbles and tried to catch a glimpse of the growing crystal in the middle of the tank.

With a shake of his head, the two-tailed fox forced his attention back to the computer screens in front of him. Unlike his blinded eyes, the sensors monitoring the tanks could see well behind what was going on. A highly sensitive voltmeter measured the high voltage current that was flowing from an anode at the top of the tank through the chaos liquid to a cathode at the tank's bottom. The screen next to it showed a frequently updated image of the magnetic and electric field induced by this current.

Had the bright light in the beginning of the process mostly come from the electricity used and it's reaction to the liquid chaos energy, now most of it was caused by the increasingly strong chaos field of the artificial Master Emerald that was growing inside the tank, held in place by the magnetic field and with every second passing growing bigger as the liquefied chaos energy crystallized.

The building Emerald's chaos field was shown on another screen, a wild, confusing mess of streamlines that appeared and vanished apparently at random, sometimes pulsing up and drawing shapes reminding Tails of a sun's protuberances on the screen. He yet failed to detect a pattern in the chaos… but truth be told, he had never found one in his fake Chaos Emerald's field either. He supposed the Emeralds were named 'chaos' for a reason. He'd just thought the Master Emerald would be different.

Well, maybe it was. To be fair, Tails had no idea if he was doing it right, if what he was building would really turn out to be fake Master Emeralds. He was feeding them with currents of the frequency he'd calculated based on the data Metal Sonic had scanned from the real Master Emerald, but he wasn't sure if that would be enough. Perhaps he really hoped an actual Master Emerald was more than the sum of its parts, more than a great amount of chaos energy crystals aligned in the correct way. But maybe he was clutching at straws there.

Still, the fake Chaos Emerald he'd built before had, while getting considerably close to the real ones, lacked in various ways. Tails hoped his Master Emeralds would also lack here and there and wouldn't give Metal Sonic what he wanted. Tails didn't want to be responsible for giving a totally insane robot the ultimate tool to destroy the world.

Thoughtfully the fox flicked a switch, slightly altering the phase of the inducing current. While he wished very much for his work to fail, he didn't want to risk letting it get out of control. With the amounts of energy involved, unstable chaos energy to be precise, it was dangerous leaving it alone. But the Emeralds were growing at a constant rate and in every tank the same processes took place, processes that seemed familiar to him, closely resembling those of when he'd grown his Chaos Emerald copy.

Tails frowned, once again glimpsing up at the tank. Maybe he was just building seven giant, slightly out of the usual energy pattern Chaos Emeralds? Chaos Emeralds with Master Emerald properties? Some weird chimera? He didn't know, and not knowing was just increasing his concern.

But nothing in these large, glowing tanks could match his concern about the blue armored robot standing in front of the tanks, staring into the glow as if he'd love to get even closer to insane amounts of unstable energy being compressed and altered. Tails grimaced. Dr. Eggman was insane, yes. But somehow Tails found Metal Sonic a lot more insane.

And if his experiment worked, this insane robot would in a few days have a hold of more energy and power than anyone had ever had, during all of Mobius', heck during all of the entire universe's history. If things turned out the way Metal Sonic wanted, the world was doomed…

Tails gulped. He had to do something. He had to escape. Otherwise… he didn't know if anyone would live to tell about Metal Sonic's fake Master Emeralds.

* * *

With a small clanking sound, another sharp-edged piece of metal dropped into a clay bowl on the floor next to Knuckles' bed, joining a fair amount of others. Knuckles paid little attention to it, directly returning to his work.

His fingers were red with blood. For the sake of greater sensitiveness and flexibility, the echidna had for once taken off his boxing gloves. He felt his fingertips around the wound he'd just retrieved the metal piece from to make sure he had not missed on another one, then continued for the next cut.

Sonic lay on his right side, slightly curled up, facing Knuckles but not really looking at him. The hedgehog's eyes were half closed and he seemed more asleep than awake to Knuckles at the moment. While the guardian still had no real idea what exactly Sonic had been dosed with, it sure appeared to be a great painkiller. Since Knuckles had started tending to his injuries, Sonic had never seemed to notice much of the procedure.

The red echidna's thumb and index finger took hold of the end of another erratically shaped metal piece. He carefully tried if it moved, then with a quick motion pulled it out of Sonic's shoulder.

The force of the jolt was enough for even the dazed blue hedgehog to feel and he slightly turned his head towards Knuckles, drowsy green eyes questioning. They widened a little as they focused, or rather tried to, on the piece of metal in Knuckles' hand. "Whoa… that was in there…?"

"Yes, along with a lot of other weird stuff." Knuckles held it out at him between two fingers, letting him see it for a moment before dropping it into the bowl. "Hope you didn't want to keep it."

"Uh, no." Sonic smiled a little and settled back into the pillow as if he'd never done anything more relaxing than lying here.

Knuckles watched him briefly. Strong stuff indeed. Still, there were upsides to it. He wouldn't want his friend to be in pain, and his work was easier when Sonic was relaxed like that than it had been if the hedgehog were tense or squirming.

He returned to searching for any more pieces to be removed. Of course, there were also downsides to Sonic's obliviousness. If he could say where it hurt and how, Knuckles would be able to tell if he had missed something… His examination however didn't turn up anything more and he went over to cleaning the wounds and applying some bandages.

When he was ready, the echidna found Sonic had fallen asleep at some point during the procedure. Knuckles shrugged to himself. Probably he was best off that way. He fetched a blanket for his friend and sat back on his stool for a moment. He'd done what he could. Now it was waiting for Sonic to sleep off his intoxication… Whatever had caused it.

Knuckles sighed. Hopefully he'd wake up with a functional brain again. He needed to answer a lot of questions, and Knuckles was really sick of guessing.


	20. Oversight

He was falling. Falling down a long kind of tunnel with colorfully flashing walls. A tube of blinking neon lights.

No idea how long the free fall lasted already. His body was weightless as he rushed past thousands of other equally falling things. Rings, Chaos Emeralds, chili dogs, Eggman robots, spiked balls.

Sonic looked down. Had the tunnel seemed endless so far, now there was something at the bottom of it. Something red with a yellow star symbol on it. A spring.

The hedgehog had barely recognized the object when he already dropped onto it. The familiar sound didn't come, but the spring bounced him upwards. Sonic turned his head to see where he was going, just to find he was catapulted right towards a set of spikes. He struggled, trying to move away from it and his eyes shot open.

The sudden intense light drilled a sharp pain through his head, threatening to split it in half. In reflex Sonic clenched his eyes shut again, gasping for air. His head felt as if someone was beating a large hammer repeatedly against his brow. For just a second the unpleasing image of Amy Rose wielding that hammer lingered in his mind, followed by a couple of random impressions of weird places with colorful balls and confusing, glowing patterns, then he managed to shove them off for a first conscious thought.

"Sweet chaos, my _head_ …" His hands moved to feel for it, and the pounding headache was joined by a painful twinge from his left shoulder and side. "Oww…"

In a reaction more based on instinct than decision, Sonic let his left arm drop back onto – yeah, what? His fingers moved over the soft surface and he slowly tried opening his eyes again. The surroundings were still terribly bright and the light stung in his eyes. Sonic blinked quickly and the world around him started to shift into focus.

The soft thing was a dark brown woolen blanket. It apparently belonged to the bed he was in. The pillow and mattress were nothing short of comfortable, but Sonic was perfectly sure that wasn't _his_ bed. Neither To his left, a blank and rough stone wall rose up to where it became a kind of ceiling. There was a small hole in it, the main source of this _terrible_ light.

Sonic's gaze returned from the ceiling to the covers pulled over him, and he spotted the white bandages around his upper torso and left arm. For another few seconds he stupidly stared at them, then carefully felt over the gauze with his right hand.

"I take it they hurt _now_."

The hedgehog turned his head to the right at the dry, matter-of-fact voice. At the other side of the not exactly big room sat a crimson echidna on a three-legged kind of stool, watching him out of dark violet eyes. "… Knux?"

"Good observation." Knuckles stood and picked up his seat, walking over to him. "I'm actually kind of glad you really know who I am, though."

"Huh?" Sonic carefully got up to a sitting position, again holding his head. His stomach turned over even before he was fully upright, a wave of nausea bordering on dangerous level shot through his body and he was damned if he knew what Knuckles was talking about.

"You weren't exactly… _sane_ , yesterday." The echidna shrugged a little. "You know where you are?"

Sonic shook his head and immediately regretted it. "Ugh… No. Oh, and while you're at it, tell me how I got here, what happened to my shoulder and most of all why my frickin' head feels like it's gonna explode…"

Knuckles suppressed a chuckle and put his chair down to sit next to the bed. "In short, you're on Angel Island, specifically at my houseroom not far from the Temple of Chaos. I brought you here yesterday, after I broke you out of the Master Emerald you were caught in. There was debris from an explosion stuck in your shoulder and you'd been shot with a tranquilizer arrow, I suppose that's where the headache comes from."

Sonic stared. That… didn't quite make any sense, and it wasn't just because his head hurt so badly and the room was doing a slow carousel motion. " _What_?"

"Do you remember yesterday?" Knuckles watched him in what looked like distant interest.

Sonic blinked. Once, twice. Yesterday. That probably meant the day before now. What had he done before waking up here? Sleeping, obviously. But what had he done before that? He remembered Knuckles. The Emerald altar. A walk through a forest. Talking. What had they been talking about?

"Should I take the long silence as 'no'?" The echidna's words, in spite of their content, were spoken softly and without any feeling behind Sonic could identify.

"I… We've been… walking here?", Sonic asked finally.

"Yes. One could reasonably say I rather carried you here, but okay." Knuckles leaned forwards a little, resting his forearms on his knees.

Sonic looked at him, trying to make something like sense of his words. "What'd we talk about?"

A short impression of a grin darted over the guardian's face. "Your last chili dog, who you're going to share it with and clouds that look like Eggman."

The blue hedgehog felt his jaw drop. "What?"

"Don't look at me like that, I surely didn't prompt any of these topics," Knuckles remarked dryly.

"Oh." Sonic let his gaze wander through the room briefly. "How'd I get here you said?"

"Uh, we walked? Didn't we just establish that?" The red echidna had tilted his head, a small frown wrinkling his brow.

Sonic shook his head. "No, I mean, yes, I mean… How'd I get _on your island_?"

"Your sentences are just slightly better than yesterday…" Knuckles' face had taken on an amused look. "But really, as I already said, _I broke you out of the Master Emerald_."

Although his friend had spoken slowly, as if to make sure Sonic understood him, the hedgehog wasn't quite sure if he did. "Excuse me?"

"Someone I still don't know who they really are sealed you inside the Master Emerald. And no, I don't know how they did that. I was hoping you would." The echidna's amethyst eyes tracked him, suddenly piercing.

Sonic closed his eyes as he forced himself to push past the headache and try to get some hold of his memory. The weird green crystal wall, his reflection in it, the moment when it had suddenly fallen apart. Had that been the Master Emerald?

"There was, like, a wall. A wall consisting of green crystal stuff. It was like a giant green mirror, but a crazy one." Sonic opened his eyes again, looking at Knuckles. "I could see my reflection in it, and suddenly it would change and it was like there was a picture in it, or as if I could look through it. As if the mirror turned to glass."

The guardian's look was firmly set on his face. "Go on," he urged, and his voice was quiet as if spell-bound. "What did you see in it?"

Sonic shrugged. "All sorts of stuff. I guess I saw you once. And I saw other people I don't know, houses, and all sorts of places. I think I saw Chaos, too. And one of Eggman's flying things. It was kinda random."

Knuckles nodded slowly and Sonic thought he looked somewhat disappointed. "Anything else?"

"Before I found that wall thing," Sonic continued, "I was in a few very odd places. I thought it was some kinda special zone, but there was no end to it. There were colorful balls in there, but no Chaos Emerald turned up when I collected them, and I couldn't get out of there. Everytime I thought I reached the end of it, I just landed in a new weird looking place."

"A special zone you say?" Knuckles kneaded his hands.

"Yeah, it really looked like one sometimes. Just that it was huge. And even stranger than a normal special zone…" Sonic felt a frown form on his brow. "As much as any special zone is _normal_ …"

Knuckles remained silent for almost a minute. "Do you remember getting sealed inside the Master?", he asked then.

Again Sonic closed his eyes. What had been before he'd wandered through all this weirdness? It felt like it was a long time ago… "What'd we do?"

The echidna seemed to begin catching up on Sonic's problem. "You and Tails came along to help me get the Master Emerald back. Someone disguised as you had stolen it, you remember?"

"Yeah…" Slowly Sonic actually did. "You showed up at Tails' workshop pretty pissed 'cause you thought it was me. Then you figured it wasn't me and we went to get your shiny stone back."

Knuckles nodded, silently skipping on his error of judgment. "We found the Master Emerald in an old, deserted base of some sort, but when we wanted to get it out, robots attacked us."

Sonic massaged his temples. "Tails went to try and find a way out of there for us…"

"I was fighting a few robots," Knuckles continued, "when something blew up and I thought I saw you being thrown into another room by the explosion. I wasn't sure, though."

Sonic stopped drawing circles on the sides of his head. "I remember the explosion. I crashed into some wall and when I got up to get back to you and Tails, I was suddenly dizzy. I… don't know what happened after that for sure. The next thing I really know is that I was in this weird place."

Knuckles nodded again. "When I got you out of the Master Emerald yesterday, you still had pieces of metal from the explosion stuck in your shoulder, in what looked like barely a few minutes old, bleeding wounds. And I found a small tranquilizer arrow in your neck." The echidna cocked his head aside. "Someone must have shot it at you while you were recovering from the explosion that hit you. The drug in the dart sedated you and that person was able to do whatever they did to trap you inside the Master Emerald without you resisting." The guardian scratched the back of his head in thought. "I don't know if and how time passes inside the Master Emerald, or in the special zone, or wherever exactly you were, but when I got you out, you were still very stoned and your wounds looked still fresh. After almost a week. At least for your body, that week didn't happen, maybe…"

"A week?" Sonic gawked. He wasn't even sure if he would have thought it was a longer or shorter time. Now everything that had happened felt more and more like a very weird dream to him. "If you say I got so many cuts in my shoulder, why didn't I feel them before? Or see them? And why do I remember what happened in this weird place, but not really how I got there or how you got me out of it?"

The Emerald guardian shook his head. "I don't know, Sonic. The only people that got sealed inside the Master Emerald before were Chaos and Tikal. Chaos was a water monster, a mutated chao. There isn't any creature like him. And Tikal was probably the first ever guardian. They are quite different from you." Knuckles ran a hand through his dreadlock-quills. "We never asked Tikal or Chaos what happened while they were stuck in it. Thing is, they could be in it for over four thousand years and they didn't age. Nor did their personality change. Chaos, after released from inside the stone, felt the same anger and hatred he had felt when he was sealed in it." The echidna shrugged. "Like I said, maybe time doesn't pass inside the Master Emerald. Maybe everything you saw and did was some kind of dream or vision."

"You mean, it never happened? All of this?" Sonic felt his ears droop. "It felt like forever!"

"It maybe was forever." Knuckles' voice was neutral and flat when he said that. As if it were an everyday statement. As if it wouldn't confuse him at all. "Were you ever hungry, thirsty, tired?"

Sonic blinked slowly. "Tired, yes. I remember sleeping on some weird giant cotton cloud thingy in a place that was full of big… soap bubbles or something that looked like it. And I slept a next to the strange green wall on the floor."

"Okay, but were you hungry? Did you eat something, or drink?" Knuckles had folded his arms as he looked at him.

The blue hedgehog frowned. "I… no. There wasn't anything like food or water. But I never really thought of it."

"Get what I'm saying?" Knuckles nodded slowly. "You were in there for six days. Given the amount of energy you have to burn daily you'd have at least gotten remarkably thinner than before without food. And without water for six days? You'd probably be dead."

"I _am_ pretty thirsty…", Sonic trailed thoughtfully.

"You're pretty thirsty because of the blood you lost and having been out for the count for fifteen hours here without drinking," Knuckles gave back dryly.

"But… I… That doesn't make _sense_ …" Sonic shook his head, ears still flat. "My head hurts."

Knuckles stood from his stool. "I know," he said and Sonic was grateful for the quietness of his voice as the echidna moved to a small kind of shelf on the opposite wall of the room and got a thing that looked like a mixture of bottle and amphora out of it. "I suppose it's not very fair of me asking all these questions… without breakfast even." He returned to sit down on his stool again, holding the bottle thing out at Sonic. "Here, fresh water from the creek outside."

Sonic smiled a little. "Thanks," he mumbled. He felt like his angrily pounding head couldn't stand much more talking or, even worse, _thinking_. The blue hedgehog took the bottle from Knuckles and drank.

The water was cold and had the taste only water from high mountains has, pure and pristine. It ran down his dry throat and slowing revived at least a few of his spirits. Sonic sighed between greedy gulps. For a moment he fought the urge to take what was left of the cool liquid and dump it over his aching head, in spite of his general disliking of getting wet. In the end the thirst won though, aided by the unpleasant image of what Knuckles would do to him if he dumped water into his bed. His head really wouldn't survive a punch of a spiked fist today…

* * *

When the door of his cell closed behind him, Tails tiredly sank against it and closed his eyes. They felt dry and burned painfully, from both lack of sleep and the bright light in the laboratory. By tomorrow, the Master Emeralds would be completed. After a few hours of stabilizing them Metal Sonic would be free to use them.

Tails sighed. He didn't know how long he'd been up. It seemed like forever. His body felt leaden and sluggish and his brain seemed a dull lump of cotton at the moment. He sank down to the floor and picked up the tray of food his captor had left for him, eating it in an automatism without knowing what it was he'd had afterwards.

Numbly he stared into the pale blue room. He didn't want this to happen. He didn't want Metal Sonic to rule the world, or destroy it. He didn't want to help him. He wanted home, he wanted Sonic to be there, smiling at him and telling him everything would be fine. He wanted to see the sun, the sparkling sea at the Mystic Ruins' coast. He wanted to sit in the Tornado, with Sonic cheering on the wing as he flew a loop and Knuckles complaining he'd get sick. And then he wanted to listen to them having a senseless argument. He wanted things just to be back to normal, like they used to be.

But they weren't. He was stuck in this stupid underwater base, a prisoner of an insane robot, forced to help him. And he was alone.

Tails swallowed dryly. He needed to escape. He had no chance stopping Metal Sonic on his own. He had to escape and get help.

Warily Tails looked around his cell. No matter that he had to be here for days already, he'd hardly even looked at the room. Metal Sonic let him work until he was so exhausted he practically fell asleep as soon as he got here and was back to bring him to work again almost as soon as he woke up.

The young fox' blue eyes wandered through the room. There wasn't much to see due to the lack of furniture. The walls were smooth and spotless… aside of a grating near the top of the room.

An air bent? Probably, an underwater base, like a space station, required a complex system to circulate the air. Tails smiled a little. Maybe he could get out of here that way. And then he'd alert someone. Rouge maybe. While she wasn't exactly a friend, she would help him, and she had Shadow on her side, too. Maybe the self-proclaimed Ultimate Lifeform was a match for Metal Sonic? At least it was better than being on his own.

Tails crawled to his feet, tiredness momentarily forgotten. He spun his tails and slowly hovered up until he was facing the grating. It was secured in place with four screws at the edges, but it didn't need long for Tails to get rid of them. He pulled the grating open and slipped into the narrow tunnel that lay behind.

Ignoring the discomfort of the tight place, the young fox carefully crawled onwards. He was going to escape from his prison, he would get help, Metal Sonic would be stopped… Tails smiled, speeding up his crawl.

When he reached the end of the narrow air tunnel, he was in relatively good spirits and already plotting how he could most quickly alert as many people as possible of the upcoming threat.

The end of the tunnel was closed with another grating, but unlike the one in his cell this one wasn't closed with screws and opened simply when he pushed against it. Cautiously Tails slipped out of it, dropped to the floor –

And was caught by his tails in the iron grip of a metal claw. The fox froze as Metal Sonic lifted him up and held him in front of his face, the red eyes piercing. "I knew you were going to try this one day," he snarled sharply, holding Tails upside down. "If you try again, I will kill you."

The fear was back instantly, pouring liquid ice through Tails' paralyzed body. He didn't even dare struggling as Metal Sonic carried him back into his cell.

* * *

Sonic sighed, sitting on the edge of Knuckles' bed and massaging his temples. "I'm sorry, if you're expecting any great insight on how your shiny stone works inside, there's nothing I can tell you. All I saw was a lot of mind-blowing stuff. There was no mystical magic voice that explained the sense of life and Emerald guarding to me. If anything like that is there, it clearly ignored that I was there as well. And what I dreamed sure was very strange, but my days were so weird it's not really surprising." Sonic looked up at the echidna. "Really, I'm sorry, if I had anything important to tell, you'd be the first to hear it."

"I see…" Knuckles nodded slowly. He still looked disappointed to Sonic. The past hour had passed by with nothing but Knuckles asking questions about Sonic's past few days, the time he'd - supposedly – spent inside the Master Emerald. Sonic wasn't quite sure what Knuckles hoped he'd have seen or experienced, but a few times he'd been tempted to ask the echidna if he was jealous Sonic had been there instead of him. In the end, he'd kept silent about it, out of fear his words would hit a sore spot and the reaction that would follow maybe wouldn't be healthy for him having said them, as much as out of simple indifference. Right now Sonic really couldn't have cared less where exactly he'd been and what Knuckles thought of that. He was tired, his shoulder ached and his head hurt and he really didn't want to answer any more questions.

Knuckles was watching him, shifting around on his stool. "I think I'm the one who should be sorry," he said quietly. "But nobody's ever been where you've been before, well, nobody I could ask at least, and this is really important to me… And I'm afraid if I wait until later you'll have forgotten things." The echidna dropped his gaze onto his large hands that lay in his lap.

Sonic nodded a little. He could, somewhat, understand Knuckles. There he spent his whole life sitting in front of that giant glowing stone trying to understand it, and then someone came who had seen it from the inside. It kind of made sense Knuckles was trying to squeeze the last bit of information out of him. Just that Sonic didn't really have any information other than 'it looks weird inside your shiny rock'. "It's okay," he said anyway. "Y'know, if I'd known where I was and that anyone would ask for it, I would have paid more attention to the details. But I didn't. I was basically just awed because everything was so weird and all I did was trying not to kill myself and find the exit."

A short chuckle came from the red echidna. "Can't claim I would have done anything else," he admitted.

Sonic smiled. "So, now that I've told you everything I know, how about you tell me a few things?"

Knuckles titled his head. "I… can't really tell you anything about what you saw inside the Master. It is –"

"No, not about that," Sonic interrupted. "About what happened in the, yeah, _real_ world while I was gone traveling through the depths of shining crystals."

"Oh." Knuckles looked actually taken aback a little. "That."

Sonic grinned. "Yes, that. Just to remind you, the real world still exists."

The guardian frowned. "I know that."

"Uh-huh." The hedgehog twitched his ears in slight amusement. "Then fill me in on what it did while I was… uh, absent."

"Well, I spent most of the time here, on the island I mean, especially in the Temple of Chaos," Knuckles began.

"Guarding the Master Emerald," Sonic added. It seemed the obvious thing.

The echidna nodded absentmindedly. "Yes, sure. Although we weren't sure if the thief was still out there, no-one came here and I brought the island back to a safe altitude and far out over the ocean." Knuckles paused for a moment, thoughtfully looking at Sonic. "The things that disturbed me weren't any intruders. There was something about the Emerald. It's field, the energy, it felt… different after I returned it to the shrine, but first I thought that was just because of it having been displaced before. The Master's moods are complicated and it has always been different to normal after it had been taken away from the island, or its power had been used, or it had been broken. So I just waited for everything to return to normal over time."

Sonic looked back at his friend. "But it didn't," he concluded.

"Right, it didn't." Knuckles nodded again. "Instead… something happened to _me_."

"To you?" The blue hedgehog raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"

Knuckles shrugged. "It started with little things. Sudden headaches, dizziness, zoning out. I was doing something and suddenly I was somewhere else and didn't know how I'd gotten there. Aside of that, there was just a constant feeling of… wrongness. At first I thought I'd maybe snatched a cold or something. And then, after a few days, I started to have visions and nightmares."

"Of what?"

Knuckles' violet eyes snapped to fix on him. "You."

"Me?" Sonic stared.

"Yes. Of you in the base we'd gotten the Emerald from, lying in front of the Master Emerald, I guess. Another time I saw you and you were in some very dark place. And finally I kept seeing always the same picture, of you standing in front of a wall of what looked like glass to me at first, pressing your nose against it trying to look through it. And then I kind of phased through that green wall and was standing in front of the Master Emerald." Knuckles exhaled.

Sonic blinked. "You… you knew I was inside of the Emerald because you dreamed it?"

Knuckles nodded silently.

Sonic shook his head in disbelief. "I was rescued because of your nightmares…"

"No, you were rescued because the Master, excuse me for putting it that way, wanted to get rid of you and used the… _link_ that exists between the Emerald and me as its guardian to let me know it," Knuckles corrected.

"Fine, then why didn't it just tell you 'there's a guy stuck inside of me that needs breaking out'? Why the hold up?"

"Because it doesn't work like that!" Knuckles shook his head. "The Master can do a lot, but it can't talk."

"Okay, fine, I get it," Sonic soothed. It was funny that he was the one with the jackhammer lodged between his temples and he needed to do the soothing. "The shiny stone didn't like me and tried to tell you you're supposed to get me out again." He stopped. "Wait, why didn't you ever feel weird while Tikal and Chaos were inside the Emerald?"

Knuckles shrugged slightly. "I can only assume the Master Emerald accepted their presence. Tikal had willingly sealed herself alongside with Chaos into the Emerald. The Master allowed her to be inside of it. You were, again sorry for saying it like that, an intruder."

Sonic frowned. "It's not like I was there on purpose."

"I'd suppose it knew that, otherwise you wouldn't have come out that unharmed I assume," Knuckles remarked. "It pretty much let you go in peace, didn't it?"

Sonic pointedly looked at his bandaged shoulder. "Uh-huh…"

"You know that this wasn't the Emerald's doing," Knuckles noticed.

"Now are you defending it?" Sonic suppressed a chuckle. "Okay, but it could have been so nice to do the awesome chaos healing thing for me while I was there."

Knuckles shrugged. "Either it didn't feel like it, or… I'm not even sure if Master Emerald healing works for anyone but the guardian."

Again, Sonic's hand went for his aching head. "Fine. Let's just drop the matter of the shiny stone for now. There's something else I've been wondering about."

"What?" The red echidna watched him, observing the slow circles his fingers drew on his temples.

"When I was quite obviously inside that giant Emerald of yours… why did you never wonder where I had gone?"

Knuckles' eyes snapped wide in momentary confusion, then even further in barely concealed alarm at some shocking realization he'd made privately in his head just now. "Because you were there," he mumbled distantly, dazedly. "Well, we thought you were there."

Sonic's head pounded more angrily and he just knew he looked stupid right now. "Come _again_?"

"We thought you were there alright," Knuckles repeated, audibly forcing a pretense of steadiness back into his voice. "Tails and me, I mean. We were inside that base, then a bunch of robots attacked us and we kind of got split up. Tails went to find the quickest way back to the exit and where we'd left the Tornado. I kind of lost track of where you were during the fight, but I couldn't find you afterwards. Instead, I found the Master Emerald and quickly got it outside. You were already at the plane when I got there, and Tails flew me back up to the island where I restored the Emerald to the altar. You and Tails just left. It all made sense – until the Emerald started giving me strange visions."

Slowly shock was working its way through Sonic's body. "That means, you took that whoever he is that looks like me along – and now Tails is alone with him!"

Obviously Knuckles had been struck by the same thought, just a moment earlier than Sonic. "It's my fault," he mumbled. "It's my fault."

"What if he does something to him?" Sonic felt his heart beating faster. "We gotta go and check out if he's okay!" He quickly jumped to his feet and darted for the door, totally disregarding the fact he still didn't even have shoes on.

He didn't get very far anyway. His stomach lurched, his head felt like someone had ripped it off his shoulders, span it around three times and put back on his neck upside-down. In a desperate search for stability Sonic stumbled against the stone wall next to the door he'd meant to take, but it was either dropping against that wall, throwing up or fainting outright. Sonic picked the first option, slowly sliding down against it while feeling like the floating island was a ship tumbling through a storm.

Knuckles seemed strangely unaffected by the ground's mad tilting. He was moving closer, a frown on his face and concern obvious. "Sonic!"

The hedgehog struggled to crawl back up against the wall. "I'm… _fine_ …"

"Sure you are," Knuckles remarked dryly. "The whole falling over your own feet routine is just for laughs."

Sonic had made it halfway up again. "I'm good, we gotta go," he insisted. No chance in the world he'd admit that he'd keeled over again if it wasn't for the firm grip Knuckles had assumed around his shoulders. It hurt, but that hardly mattered now.

"To use one of your standard phrases: no way." Knuckles shoved him backwards slowly. "You're hurt and just not well enough to go anywhere right now."

Sonic's legs bumped into the edge of the bed and his knees somehow took that as a cue to give way. "Tails needs me," he protested weakly as he dropped down.

"Probably, but do you seriously think you're a help to him like that?" Knuckles pushed him back on the bed until he fell on his back.

"I can handle it…" Sonic struggled against the pressure of Knuckles' hands. The pillow his head had fallen in felt nice, the mattress was soft and his sore body was melting into it and Sonic hated it for that.

"Sonic, listen." Knuckles hosted his feet up onto the bed while keeping him down with one hand and the fact he looked like it didn't cost him the least bit of strain was also something Sonic hated. "It doesn't really matter if you rest for a bit, really. The island is floating at several kilometers of altitude over the open sea, probably hundreds of kilometers away from the next land. If we want to go to Tails and check up on him, I need to lower the island a lot and move it closer to the coast at least so we can get off it, you understand?"

Sonic stopped resisting, trying to force his pounding head to follow Knuckles' words. "We can't go?"

Knuckles shook his head. "Not as quickly as you probably thought."

"But, Tails needs help and –"

The echidna's amethyst eyes softened ever so slightly and amidst the shock, anger and guilt that burned in them it made him look inexplicably _lost_. "I know, and I understand. In a way, we're both guardians…"

Sonic stared. The room still titled and rotated gently. " _What_?"

"Never mind." Knuckles forcibly smiled a little. "I will go and start moving the island towards Tails' house, okay? And while I do that, you have plenty of time to rest that head of yours, and whatever else is giving you trouble. This is a floating island, not a fast aircraft. It moves slowly. I'm sorry to say that, but we won't make it there before tomorrow."

"To-" Sonic blinked. "And what if something happens until we're there?!"

Knuckles' tone was calm, even as his eyes were anything but. The deep violet flickered with barely contained fire, but he kept it there, right beneath the surface. "Then we'll find a way to deal with it. Fine?"

"Oh…okay…" Sonic nodded, exhaling a deep breath, trying to pull himself together. If Knuckles was making an obvious effort, he'd have to do so as well. The nausea was abating slowly and the pain in his head was receding to the initial default level.

"Relax and try to get some more sleep, Sonic." Knuckles looked down on him. "I can perfectly steer this island alone. I've done that a lot of times."

Relaxing his quills, Sonic surrendered to his fate and finally allowed his heavy head to sink deeper into the pillow, and closed his eyes. "Don't you dare screwing it up…"

Knuckles' tone was bitterly hollow even to his ringing ears. "I think I did enough screwing up, didn't I?"


	21. Levitating

"Here you are." Sonic looked up when Knuckles handed him a small bowl. The hedgehog took it from his hand and placed it in his lap. It was warm and the smell that hung in the entire room was even stronger now.

Sonic had slept through most of the day and when he'd wakened up it had been to just that same smell. A scent that reminded him of vanilla pudding. In fact, the stuff in the bowl was some kind of pudding, but it contained little corns that looked like some sort of round, tiny rice to Sonic. Maybe it even was something like that. The hedgehog dug his spoon into the pudding and tried it.

He brightened. It was very sweet and really had an aftertaste of vanilla that lingered on in his mouth even after he'd swallowed. "Wow, that's good," he exclaimed, taking another spoonful. "Whasit?"

Knuckles smirked. "One of the few warm recipes I know." He sat down next to where Sonic was leaning against the stone wall aside of the small fireplace.

Sonic swallowed, licking his lips. "I think you really need to share it."

Knuckles stirred his own pudding. "I'm afraid that wouldn't help you much; the main component is a cereal that only grows on Angel Island."

"Too bad." Sonic quit the small talk at that point, he was starving and the pudding was too good to risk letting it become cold.

Aside of offering another bowlful of the stuff when Sonic finished his first Knuckles accepted the silence, eating his own food and when he was done he just sat and watched the hedgehog eat his. It was only when Sonic was done and leaned back against the wall that he spoke up. "You look better."

"So?" Sonic raised a brow.

Knuckles shrugged, face a careful mask that was impossible to look through. It was quite a leap from the self-loathing guilt that had stood in his eyes when Sonic had fallen asleep earlier. "That's good."

Sonic smiled, reminding himself that Knuckles had not slept the day away as he had and that he'd presumably spent this day beating himself up. He needed Knuckles as much as Knuckles needed him and Tails needed them both, so he figured he should try and cut the echidna some slack. "I suppose," he agreed softly.

The echidna still insisted to take a look at Sonic's injuries and all protests the hedgehog gave about this being not necessary at all fell on deaf ears. In the end Sonic had to admit to himself that his shoulder felt better after Knuckles had cleaned the wounds, placed some herbs he claimed were good for them over the cuts and replaced the bandages. Not that Sonic was about to say that aloud.

Instead, he grinned at the echidna who was putting his medicine stuff away to where it belonged, a small attempt at familiar playful banter. "Are you done with me now, doc?"

Knuckles arched an eyebrow, looking over his shoulder. "Almost. As soon as I get you back into bed," he said and Sonic noticed he didn't seem to be that much in the mood for banter.

"Aw, really? Man, I've been there for forever today," the hedgehog complained, attempt number two. He'd never been one to give up when a first attempt didn't work out right away.

The guardian turned around to face him, arms folding on his chest. "Perhaps you have, but we might very well need you in a fit shape for fighting tomorrow. In case you've forgotten, you've been rather far from anything like that recently, and I sure as heck won't be going around waiting for you," he pointed out dryly, sharply.

Sonic flinched, beginning to lose his fragile leash on humour and temper. "You won't need to wait for me, I betcha."

Knuckles however seemed to appreciate the retort more than anything Sonic had tried before. He nodded. "Fine." He sat next to the fire and took a slow breath in a visible effort to center himself. "I know you want to get to Tails as soon as possible. Believe me, so do I. But for now all we can do is wait until we get there and make sure we're prepared."

"Yeah." Sonic sighed heavily, probably to Knuckles' endless surprise really laying down on the bed. He settled down with his good hand under his neck and pulled the covers up to his chest. Finding the echidna openly stare at him, he shot a frowning look back. "Here, I'm resting. But don't you think you're rid of me, 'cause I bet I can't sleep now."

Knuckles shrugged. Sonic supposed he figured he'd gotten a lot more than he'd expected, so he kept quiet about it. "You wanna talk then?"

The hedgehog nodded just to make a point. He didn't want to talk. He knew Knuckles didn't want to talk either, but he knew both of them _needed_ to talk, and Knuckles wouldn't be the one to start, so that task fell to him. "Guess so. What else can we do while we're hanging here?" His gaze moved from Knuckles to the shadows the fire caused to dance over the rocky ceiling and he decided to not take the most direct and painful plunge for their both sake. Maybe some stalling was in order. Nobody would gain anything if they made this a snarking match as they used to. "What do you think someone does that for?"

"Does what?" Knuckles leaned with his shoulder against the wall next to him, relaxing slightly, if confusedly, at Sonic's evasive choice of topic. Probably he'd expected him to round right on him and stab his finger in the most sore spot.

"Lock me into your shiny rock to take my place." Sonic flicked his ears. "I mean, why'd you want to be someone else? What do you get out of that?"

The echidna shrugged and shook his head. "I don't have any clue, Sonic. Makes no sense to me why someone would want to be you… It'd kinda suck eating nothing but chili dogs…"

Sonic chuckled, throwing Knuckles a look of surprise. "Was that a joke?"

"Might have been." Knuckles pulled one foot closer to his body, popped his elbow up in his knee and leaned his face into his hand. "Why?"

The hedgehog lazily waved his hand. "I dunno. You don't often joke when things are… serious. That's more like my part, I guess."

Knuckles grunted. "You bet." He shifted a little in the warmth around the fireplace. "It's my fault," he said quietly.

Sonic lifted his head, turning towards him. Here they were, then. He'd not even needed to prod him for it. Still, feigning ignorance served wonders if you wanted Knuckles to spill his guts before whatever he'd bottled up would eat him alive. Determined, Sonic called on his admittedly less than great acting skills and intoned an innocent "What?" that dived in for the kill without his friend even realizing it.

"It's my fault," Knuckles repeated, blindly taking the bait. "About Tails, I mean. I should have thought of him, but I didn't. I was too busy wondering about the Master Emerald… and then when I got you out of it, I failed to see the consequences, that we've taken an enemy with us instead of you. I didn't realize the connection until you came up with it today and I should have. I should have been clever enough to see that if you're here with me, that imposter we've been hunting and that stole the Emerald is now with Tails. But I was too dumb to see it and if something happens to Tails…" Knuckles broke off and swallowed dryly. "This time I can't go and blame it on somebody else. I've been an idiot and if something bad happens to Tails it's my fault alone. You'd think I'd have learned by now, but I'm not better than others before me."

"Others before you?", Sonic prompted when his friend cut himself off.

"Other guardians," Knuckles elaborated bitterly, but willingly enough. "We do that. Maybe it's a guardian thing. Or an echidna thing. We sit up here, on our petty little island and care about our own little problems, never about the world at large. I –"

"Ah, stop it," Sonic interrupted, more sharply than he'd intended and obviously unexpectedly enough for Knuckles to raise his head and stare at him. "You're better than that, and you know it. You care about the world. I've been around when you've been with me, just as Tails was, to save the world, and not just your little island."

"But I didn't, Sonic!", Knuckles snapped back at him, eyes fiery and fists balled up at his sides. "I didn't look beyond my own nose! Not just once! The moment I was back here, I didn't once stop to think about the bigger picture! All I thought about was the Master Emerald and that there was something wrong with it and that I needed to fix it!"

"There was something wrong with it," Sonic allowed with a fully faked sense of calm. Nobody won if they both lost it here. Maybe it was good he was still too tired to find the energy to be angry with the echidna.

The comment stalled Knuckles for just a second. "Yes, sure, there was something wrong with it! You were in it! And that meant you couldn't be with Tails! But even after I figured that out, I didn't stop to think it through just one step further! Even after I got you out, and knew for sure you were _here_ , and not with Tails, I never thought of it! You had to think of it, and you thought of it still half delirious with whatever was in that dart! I didn't even think of it without anything messing with my head!"

"Oh, _wasn't_ there?! Something messing with your head!? There was a _Master Emerald_ of all things messing with your head, Knuckles! And while it probably always does in a way, you said yourself it was nothing like normal!" Sonic fixed his gaze to his friend's. "When was the last time you slept, for real, I mean? Had a decent meal?"

Knuckles blinked, slowly, and for a frightful second there Sonic thought the carefully constructed façade was crumbling right before his eyes, then Knuckles caught himself with a steadying breath, even though his fingers clenched so hard that it hurt looking at the faint tremors in his fists. "That's not an excuse," the echidna said, more quietly again and his voice shook enough that Sonic could hear it. Briefly the hedgehog wished he would actually lose his grip on himself and punch or break something, anything; it would be easier to watch than this.

"It's an explanation," he said gently.

"That's not the same."

"No. It is not. But it's important to know why you made a mistake, so you don't make it again." For a surreal moment Sonic found he felt like he did back when Tails had been smaller and looked up to him for guidance on all sorts of small and big problems. The tone still came naturally, even towards Knuckles. Maybe you couldn't stop being a big brother in a moment such as this.

"It's still my fault," Knuckles argued dejectedly. "If Tails is hurt –" He didn't try to finish the sentence.

For a moment silence hung heavily in the cave of Knuckles' houseroom. Sonic was chewing his bottom lip, watching Knuckles stare at the floor in front of him. "We'll save him, Knuckles," the hedgehog said quietly then.

"What if we're too late?" The guardian didn't look up. "What if he's –"

"He's fine," Sonic interrupted, sounding even somewhat confident about it.

Knuckles glanced over to him. "How can you know?"

"Because I…" Sonic sighed. "Because I can't imagine he's injured, or worse. He just… has to be okay, you know?"

Knuckles nodded silently.

* * *

For several minutes nobody spoke. Knuckles turned Sonic's last words around in his head. He knew the feeling, though he'd rarely felt that way about a person. He was feeling that way now, and suddenly, for an odd moment, if seemed weird to him that he'd before most of the time worried about a sacred gemstone. But normally you didn't need to worry about Tails much 'cause the fox was clever enough to stay out of the most dangerous situations, and his only other actually close friend wasn't the type of person you bothered worrying about outside of the situations he was facing certain doom in form of some super-powered entity. Knuckles just wasn't used to worrying about people, and if he came into a situation where he did worry about his friends, it kept confusing him. Sonic's attempts to pep-talk him aside, it stayed his fault, and he would have to deal with his guilt as it came to it.

"Do you think Eggman's behind this?" Sonic's question, spoken into the silent room, startled Knuckles out of his pondering.

"Dunno. I mean, we've seen a few robots at that base where the Emerald was, but it's not really like Eggman to just silently sneak around, sedate you from behind and let us get away with the Master Emerald and that fake Sonic person." The echidna frowned deeply, struggling to surface enough from the dark place in his mind to wrap his thoughts around Sonic's new chosen topic of conversation.

"No, it's nothing like him," Sonic agreed. "He'd make a real show out of it. He'd have maybe set a trap up for us to capture us all in that base, not just me, and he'd put us all into your glowing rock. That way, he could keep the Emerald and be rid of all of us. Much better for that world domination thing of his, right?"

Knuckles studied his friend. "Sometimes it worries me you know him so well. You have been fighting each other for too long, I guess…"

"Uh, you think?" Sonic waved his hand a little again. "I think it's all about knowing your enemy and stuff…"

The echidna just briefly inclined his head. "It's still weirding me out sometimes."

"Whatever." Sonic turned back to the flickers overhead. "But all that 'fake Sonic person', as you so nicely labeled him, did was seal me away and take my place. He let you have the Master Emerald and didn't bother at all what you did with it after you got it back. I mean, did he really just steal the Emerald to have something to put me in? Whatever happened to spooky, cold dungeons you throw your enemies in?"

The statement earned Sonic another very weird look. "You'd have preferred to be locked in some cold dungeon instead?"

Sonic nodded, suddenly dead serious. "Sometimes, heck yes. I tell you, that pitch dark labyrinth was one of the scariest places I've been to in my life. I was sure there was something there, and it was going to eat me." He shuddered at the memory.

"Uh-huh." Knuckles knew he still looked weirded-out.

A moment passed in awkward silence, then Sonic cleared his throat. "I guess we've settled for now that we don't think Eggman's behind this."

Knuckles shrugged. "But who locks you away, only to go with Tails pretending they're you? They didn't even bother about me and the Emerald, or you stuck inside of it, after that…"

"I guess they thought they're rid of me for good. At least until someone breaks the Emerald, and they couldn't know it'd be practically begging you to do that so soon." Sonic shifted a little on the bed. "But if they were after me only to seal me into the shiny stone, and didn't care at all what you did… what do they want with Tails? Why did they go with him? Just to pretend I haven't disappeared? Tails knows me better than anyone, he'll find out quickly I'm not real. I mean, that fake Sonic is not real. I mean… you get it."

Knuckles smirked for a second. "Yes, I get you." The echidna sat a little more upright again. "What if the two of us were just obstacles? I mean, you got locked away in the Master, I was easily occupied with restoring it after I got it back and you being locked, and that left Tails an easy target. But why Tails? I mean, aside of being a really nice guy… What could Tails be useful for if you want to take over the world or something? Granted they're out for that kind of thing, of course."

"I bet they are. It's always about this kind of stuff." Sonic grimaced. "But I don't know. Tails can't really do any chaos control or great fighting for them. He's best with making plans or building stuff. Wouldn't it make more sense kidnapping you and force you to use the Master Emerald for them?"

Knuckles shrugged rather helplessly and frustrated. Right now he wished they'd taken him. He'd willingly endure any torture just if it meant Tails wouldn't have to. "I don't know. For some reason, they took Tails, not one of us, and it doesn't make sense."

Wearily Sonic ran a hand down his face and sighed. "Nothing makes sense recently…"

"No," Knuckles agreed, picking up a stick that had been leaning against the wall and turned it over in his hands. "Let's just hope they need Tails for something. They can't do anything to harm him if they really need him."

Sonic nodded, through half-lidded eyes staring at the ceiling. "Yeah…"

Once more, silence fell over the cave. Nobody really knew what to say anymore. Knuckles watched the fire, every now and then using the stick to stir it and keep it high. He distantly heard Sonic yawn quietly. "Maybe we're worrying too much," the echidna spoke up again. "Maybe they're just out to run around as you and steal stuff from GUN again."

A moment passed before Sonic answered at all. "You don't really believe that," he murmured.

"No," Knuckles admitted. "Guess I was just trying to take on your part and tell us everything's fine." A light chuckle came from the hedgehog, but he didn't seem to feel like commenting actually.

Trying his best to shift his mind elsewhere but concerns about their young friend and whoever they were up against, the guardian forced his concentration back to all the things Sonic had told him about where he'd been earlier, about all these weird places. He'd never thought it could be like that inside the Master Emerald. If he was being honest, he hadn't even really believed anyone but Tikal or Chaos could exist in there.

Knuckles poked his stick into the fire, shifting the wood in the fireplace and keeping the flames from going further down. "I still don't believe it," he said quietly, gazing into the orange and deep red of the ambers. "After all this time I've been here as the Master Emerald's guardian, I still seem to find something new out about it. There seems to be so much I don't know… and I guess it's making me nervous that somewhere out there is someone who knows more about the Master than me. We have to find them. I need to know how they could do something to the Emerald nobody has done in centuries and it still seemed so easy to them. I thought there were no living person and no historical record about sealing someone inside the Emerald. I was wrong, and again that there's so much I still don't know after all these years would have almost been fatal." The echidna stirred the fire again. "Do you think there still are records about the Master Emerald left, even after thousands of years? I always used to think most knowledge was lost, but I guess we have to think again now, Sonic. … Sonic?"

There came no reply from the blue hedgehog and when Knuckles turned his head, Sonic's chest was falling and rising evenly with deep breaths. At some point during Knuckles' not exactly lengthy monologue his friend had fallen asleep.

The red echidna slowly shook his head. He wasn't even sure if he wasn't glad Sonic had not heard what he'd said. Heck, he wasn't even sure if he'd been really talking to Sonic and not to himself…

With a small sigh Knuckles put down the stick and instead shoved some fresh pieces of wood into the fire that were quickly consumed by the flames, then he stood up, throwing another short glance at the sleeping hedgehog. He supposed he was still weary from loss of blood and what one could probably reasonably call a hangover from whatever he'd been injected with, and while Knuckles had not exactly been planning to lull him into sleep with his talking, he wasn't really minding this result.

Quietly the guardian walked out of the room. He'd just briefly check on the Emerald and the course of the island again, and then he'd also hit the hay. If their concerns turned out anything like justified, they'd both need their strength tomorrow.

* * *

The cave was still dark when Sonic woke up. For a moment he lay on his back and stared at the dark ceiling, listening to Knuckles' quiet breathing, then he realized he was more awake than he remembered being in a while and there was no way he could go back to sleep no matter the probably early hour.

He crawled out of bed and spent two minutes trying to locate his shoes in the semi-dark room without making too much noise. Admittedly he felt almost guilty at the sight of Knuckles curled up next to the fireplace on the floor while he'd had the bed. It wasn't that he could change it and the echidna had insisted he stayed in the bed, but he could at least try not to wake him before sunrise even.

When he finally found his footwear in a corner, Sonic snuck out into Angel Island's quiet morning. The air was cool and fresh with just a mild wind going that rustled the fallen leaves as well as the ones yet remaining on the trees. The Eastern horizon was turning deep blue with a streak of yellow while towards the west it was still almost completely dark and a small amount of stubborn stars twinkled between a few clouds.

Sonic fell into a slow jog along a narrow path winding through the forest, his footsteps causing tiny thumps on ground that was damp with dew and his breath was steaming mists in the cool air. The light got brighter by the minute and after a short time Sonic could clearly see his path and the forest around. One by one, the birds woke up as well and began to sing their morning songs.

Not really having a goal, Sonic just let his feet carry him, from the forest out onto hills with high grass back into another forest. The wind smelled of a thousand things and it was intoxicating to run through a real place, with real wind and real smells and a real sunrise. Sonic smiled broadly. He'd so missed this… and while he'd never really given the whole concept much thought or felt attached to Angel Island, he felt like having come home.

He slowed to a walk a good half an hour later when his randomly chosen directions led him to the Temple of Chaos. The rising sun stood over the forest surrounding the clearing with the altar like a giant ball of glowing orange and its reddish, soft light painted the stone wall and pillars of the temple in almost golden hues.

Slowly Sonic walked between them until he reached the stairway and climbed it up. From the top you could overlook the hills with their lush green meadows and the forests shining in autumn's bright colors as well as the rough mountains in the island's center and the blindingly white glaciers near their tops.

Sonic admired the panorama for several minutes before he became aware of the warmth in his back. He turned around, facing the Master Emerald's green glow and folding his arms. It felt weird to him now. Well, actually it had always been weird, but it was as if something had changed about it. Or maybe he'd changed. It didn't make sense.

"What do you intend to see in it?"

Sonic jumped at the voice behind him and whirled around. Behind him stood Knuckles, a small smile curving his lips at having startled Sonic like that, and to the hedgehog's surprise he didn't look mad to find him here at all like he sometimes used to.

The blue hedgehog shrugged. "Dunno. What do you see in it?"

Knuckles' face turned serious as he stepped up to Sonic's side, violet eyes reflecting the Master Emerald's light. "It's difficult to explain. Sometimes I see the whole world in it. Sometimes nothing at all."

Sonic frowned at the guardian's reply. "Ah."

The red echidna released a breath with a small huff. "You know, sometimes I'm sure it chooses what to show. It showed me the Egg Carrier when I needed to find the last missing shards and I really found them there."

"Does it… know the future?" Sonic looked between Knuckles and the Emerald.

"I don't know. It might." Knuckles wasn't looking at him anymore, his gaze lost in the green glow of the gem. "It shows events from the past sometimes. I haven't yet seen something that happened afterwards, but the Emeralds exist out of time and space in a way. If a Chaos Emerald can get to the future, maybe it's fair to assume the Master knows something about it." The guardian slightly shook his head and his eyes returned to look at Sonic. "What did you see?"

Sonic gave a light shrug. "Nothing now. But when I was away, there was this wall and it showed a lot of things, most of the time things I didn't know. Maybe I'll get to know them in the future?"

"You might. The future isn't fixed, though, everything we do changes it constantly. The future of five minutes ago is something that maybe never comes to be now." Knuckles waved a hand dismissively.

"But –"

"Let it go. Whatever you saw in it, don't let it mess up your mind." A soft smile was on Knuckles' face. "The Emerald's ways are complex and nobody will probably ever understand them completely. In the end, the Master is, like the Seven, chaos by nature and it will always stay chaos."

Sonic nodded slowly. "Yeah… I guess."

Knuckles nodded back at him. "How long have you been here?"

"Just a few minutes before you came. I've been taking a run." Sonic smiled a little. "You know, it's great to be back."

"I guess." Knuckles smiled too. Sonic was glad to notice the morose mood of yesterday seemed to have lifted. The echidna looked between Sonic and the Emerald for a second and turned towards the stairs. "Take your time here." There was an odd understanding tone to his words. "We're almost there tough."

Sonic stood and watched the echidna slowly descend the stairway. _He leaves me here to look at his Emerald_. It felt like a privilege… in a weird way. "Knuckles, wait."

The echidna turned around. "What's it?"

"I…" Sonic awkwardly ran a hand through his quills. "I don't think I said it yet. I… know how much this," he wanted to say 'thing' but it wouldn't come out, "Emerald means to you and… y'know, thank you for breaking it to save me."

Knuckles nodded at him and a small smile was on his face. His eyes locked with Sonic's and for a second the hedgehog could see into his mind. He smiled back, knowing that, as weird as it was, no more words needed to be said.

He turned back to the Emerald. "Don't forget me… and next time, try being nicer to your visitors." For an instant the Master Emerald's glow pulsed up brighter. Sonic raised a brow. "I hope that was a yes." He turned around and followed Knuckles down the stairs.

The guardian wore a smirk as they continued out of the temple together.

Sonic grinned at him. "What?"

"Nothing. It wasn't exactly my business." The echidna grinned too.

Sonic twitched his ears. "How about we pick up some breakfast and go kick some bad guy's butt?"

Knuckles nodded with an odd mixture of grimness and humour. "Count me in."

* * *

When Angel Island's thick forest fell behind them, Sonic was still chewing on a yellow fruit he had never seen before. It had roughly the shape of an apple, but it was almost twice as large and so sweet it was almost too much to take. It wasn't too bad though and the blue hedgehog was so insanely hungry that he didn't care much about what it was he got to fill his growling stomach with.

"Are you sure this is the shortest way to the edge?", he asked between bites.

Knuckles shot him a glare. "I am sure, hedgehog. This is my island. In fact, it's not exactly the closest way to the edge from the temple, but the shortest way to the part of the edge that'll be closest to the Mystic Ruin's coast."

Sonic took another bite of the fruit. "Yeah, yeah, chill out. I didn't mean to shove something up your grumpy rearside. I'm just…" He broke of, not willing to admit how nervous for Tails he was directly into Knuckles' face.

"I know." The echidna's reply wasn't as much grumbled as Sonic had expected and the blue hedgehog realized his friend was probably just as aware of the heavy tension as he was himself… and also of the fact neither of them knew how to really deal with it. But Knuckles seemed to know as well that picking a fight just because of their both stressed-out mood wouldn't get them anywhere.

For a moment Sonic silently ate the rest of his fruit. If nobody said something, the other one couldn't be ticked off by it, right? Well, most people probably would find constant silence from their companion unnerving as well, but Sonic had never made that experience with Knuckles. Probably it was because the echidna had spent most of his life alone without anyone talking to him that he seemed to find constant silence less annoying than people talking, especially if the talking person happened to be a blue hedgehog. Sonic himself didn't, he would have loved to talk, he just wasn't sure if it would get him anywhere.

Luckily Knuckles was the one breaking the silence. "See that cliff over there?"

Sonic looked up. About 50 meters in front of them, the ground abruptly ended. A rocky outcrop hung over the edge for another maybe ten meters. "Yup, see it."

"We'll get down from there," Knuckles said, walking ahead of Sonic and climbing onto the rocks.

Sonic caught up with him when they reached the very edge and gazed down. Directly below was the blue sea, seemingly far away. As he looked a little further, he caught sight of the ragged rocks forming the coastline of the Mystic Ruins zone. The fog typical for autumn mornings hung over the hills as a white coat, only the higher mountains slightly more inland stuck out their tops.

It was only now that he looked down that Sonic realized they were way too high to just hop off the island as he'd thought they would. "Aren't we a little, you know, high?", he asked skeptically, cocking a brow at Knuckles next to him.

The echidna shrugged lightly. "Well, sorry, this is as low as I can get us. The island doesn't end at the edge you know, it has a socket that's about 300 meters high and it's already brushing the water now. Even if I wanted to immerge it and dare getting it stuck, I wouldn't get us much lower 'cause the sea is already pretty shallow here. Going any lower over the ocean or even worse over land would not help us and risk serious damage to the island and what is below it."

Sonic frowned. "It survived falling a couple times without any serious damage, didn't it?"

Knuckles ground his teeth. "Yes. Maybe. It was pure luck it wasn't anywhere over land or too shallow or deep waters when it fell."

"Okay, I see, we can't get any lower, fine." Sonic took half a step back. "But I see two problems here."

The echidna's violet eyes narrowed at him. "So?"

Sonic shrugged, trying to take Knuckles' mood easy. "Problem A is that if I just jump down here, I'll most likely break a few bones or worse after such a fall. You do remember I can't fly, right?" Knuckles just kept looking at him and Sonic continued. "Problem B, even if I survive the fall without any actual injury, I've been lucky before y'know… From this position," he pointed down, "if the fall isn't going to kill me off, I'm gonna drown."

To Sonic's surprise, Knuckles grinned a little now. "Do you think I went through the trouble you gave me the past few days, coddled you up and all that to throw you over the edge and retrieve you as hedgehog pancake or feed the fish with you?"

Sonic folded his arms, trying to find out if he found the echidna's words funny or not. "Then how does me killing myself fit into your awesome plans?"

Knuckles shrugged lightly. "Who said you'd have to jump?"

Sonic scratched his ear. His injured shoulder felt a little stiff and stung as he did. "Didn't we say we'd jump off the edge? If not, why are we even here?"

"Yeah, we said _we_ jump. What happened to the teamwork idea you spoke so highly off a while ago?" Actual amusement sparkled in Knuckles' eyes for a second.

"Teamwork, huh?" Sonic leaned forwards and gazed at the ocean and rocks several hundred meters below. "How's your teamwork gonna help us here?"

"Oh, it's simple. All you have to do is hold on tight and enjoy the ride…"

Sonic frowned at his friend. "Huh?"


	22. Snatching Rides

"Gah! Knuckles!"

A fresh and painfully acute pang of annoyance hit the red echidna, not actually caused by Sonic's slightly hysteric scream, but more by the fact the blue hedgehog was doing his absolute best at totally upsetting his balance.

"Hold still! I just can't glide like that!" From the sparkling sea below, a slight updraft registered in Knuckles' stomach, but the effect on his glide was close to non-existent. Not that it really surprised him… considering the 35 kilo of very unstable weight sitting on, well, more like clinging to his back.

"Sit still, Sonic," he repeated in a growl, trying to adjust his balance to match the turbulence that increased steadily the closer they got to the coast. The steady wind blowing from the sea met the rocks there, resulting in twirls, up-drafts and down-drafts and generally unpredictable winds. It was a challenge gliding in these conditions on his own… and that meant not even speaking of that idiot hedgehog on his back. He could feel Sonic sliding off to the right again.

Apparently the hedgehog had felt it too; he gave a small yelp and yanked hard at Knuckles' leftmost dreadlock-quill as the first best thing to hold on to in reach.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a very clever thing to hold on to; a several feet drop to the left followed as the angle of Knuckles' gliding quills suddenly changed. "Stop doing that! Hold on to my shoulders or something!" Probably Sonic was too startled to do anything else but comply and Knuckles was able to regain stability.

"You're gonna drop us into the water!", Sonic complained and he sounded unfamiliarly close to a panic.

"Ah, _that's_ it," Knuckles gave back. "It's just a bit of water. Chill out, Sonic."

"I'll chill out when you stop trying to drop me!" Sonic's fingers dug into Knuckles' shoulder when a light downdraft hit the gliding echidna.

"I'm not trying to drop you, but if you don't hold still, I'll begin to consider it! Don't move around on my back and don't you ever pull on my quills! You're spoiling… the air!" Even as he finished the sentence Knuckles had an odd feeling that it would make no sense to anyone but himself.

As expected, the reply was quick to come. "I'm spoiling the AIR? _Hello_? This is about the dumbest thing you've ever said, and that's saying something!"

Knuckles felt his temper rising. "Just shut up and _sit still_ …"

"You shut up and get us somewhere safe," Sonic insisted.

Knuckles grunted, at both the comeback and the hedgehog's tight hold on his back. At least he was keeping somewhat still from then on. Due to the extra weight and probably further adverse effects Sonic had on Knuckles' glide the descent still wasn't near as gentle and slow as the echidna was used to, it was more like a fall with a bit of horizontal distance being covered as a bonus.

Although he wouldn't have admitted it aloud, also the echidna was glad when they crossed over a cliff of the mainland. The air was even rougher here, stirred up by wind blowing over the rocks. It was rather gusty, too. Knuckles tried to countersteer when a sharp blow hit him from the side, but the thermals were against him and suddenly he was, along with his blue spiked load, dropping the last few meters onto the rocky ground.

"Ahh… oomph!" Of course, Sonic fell right on top of him, knocking the wind out of Knuckles.

" _Getoff_ ", he grunted.

Sonic scrambled off his back and got to his feet, brushing over a skinned knee. "Is that what you call a landing? I'm not flying with you again!"

Knuckles moved to stand up, too. "No, this is not what I call a landing! I don't usually glide with someone almost as heavy as myself on my back! And someone with such a terrible sense of balance even less!"

"My sense of balance is totally okay!", Sonic retorted, green eyes blazing. "You should see me grind on narrow rails! My balance rules!"

"I have seen you on rails, hedgehog, and your balance still sucks!" Knuckles clenched his fists.

"Oh yes?! And what about yours, heh?!" Sonic sounded furious now. "Tell me again, who was it dropping us outta the sky? You! It wasn't me making us fall!"

"Yes you were!" Knuckles bore his eyes into Sonic's, almost nose to nose now. "I'm also not flying with _you_ again! Next time, I'll leave you up there and go for Tails on my own!"

For a short moment Sonic looked as if Knuckles had punched him in the face, then his green eyes shot daggers at the echidna and his quills stood erect on his back. "Oh yeah?! I'll tell you something, I also don't need _you_. If you don't want to come with me, fine, I'll find Tails myself!" He turned around, those sharp blue spikes almost hitting Knuckles' face.

Even the echidna, admittedly not quite firm in social interactions, could tell he'd totally said the wrong thing at the wrong time. He really hadn't meant for them to get into a fight and part ways over it… and suddenly he felt bad about it. Looking at Sonic's back right now almost came close to the feeling of looking at a broken Master Emerald. Just… different.

The hedgehog was walking away and Knuckles jogged after him without really understanding why. "Sonic, wait!"

"Why?" Sonic had folded his arms and shot just a brief glare at him when Knuckles reached his side.

"I…" The red echidna squirmed inwardly. "I… didn't mean what I said."

Sonic didn't turn to look at him. "Is that so?" It sounded much less like a reply of any sort than a downright insult given the tone.

Knuckles was feeling angry again. Or maybe he hadn't even stopped being angry. He didn't know. "Yes, it is! Tails is my friend and if he's in trouble I'm gonna help him and you're not going to stop me!"

Sonic's head whirled to him and Knuckles wasn't quite sure what to make of his look. "Oh yes? You know what?! I didn't want to stop you! I wanted us to go together, two friends helping the third! But you're… you're always so… such a Knucklehead!"

Knuckles _hated_ being called that. "It wasn't me starting this!", he shouted, although he wasn't so sure who _had_ started this stupid argument.

"Sure was! All I wanted was getting off your island and to Tails' house quickly, without drowning somewhere and without running around shouting at you like we're idiots!" Sonic gestured with both hands, his pointed ears laid back and down.

Knuckles growled. "Then I totally don't see your point, hedgehog! You are off my island, it's not far to Tails' house and since you're standing here before me you obviously didn't drown!"

Sonic's hands dropped to his sides and suddenly he looked downright silly for a second or two and when the expression faded some of the anger had gone with it. He stared at Knuckles for another moment before turning away and continuing to walk down the gentle slope towards a green meadow further inland.

Knuckles stood and stared after him. Sonic's blue quills had almost fallen back into the usual position, just his ears staid down. Again, Knuckles had to jog a few meters to catch up with him. When he did he just walked at his side, throwing looks at the hedgehog because he totally didn't understand what was going on anymore. Had they stopped arguing? Sometimes Sonic just made no sense at all to him… No, wait, scratch that. He rarely ever made sense to him.

A minute passed in awkward silence before Sonic spoke up rather quietly. "Knuckles?"

"Huh?" The echidna was almost startled by the word. He hadn't exactly expected Sonic would talk to him again right now.

A short glance darted over to him out of eyes that had lost the angry fire but were not yet back to the shining, open look they usually held most of the time. Knuckles was still trying to make something of Sonic's expression when the hedgehog spoke again.

"Look, Knuckles… I'm sorry."

Knuckles blinked. "Uh… okay, I guess. But…" He wanted to say something about how all of this didn't make any sense, but Sonic interrupted him.

"I mean it, I… really didn't want to shout at you like that. And I also didn't want to leave you and go alone. I just…" He shrugged vaguely.

"… didn't like gliding with me much?", Knuckles suggested into a silence he found strangely uncomfortable. He normally tended to like silence.

Sonic's gaze flicked over to him again. "It… wasn't the gliding," he said after a second. "I would have probably found it a laugh if it wasn't over…" He broke off there, looking away again, the pointy ears twitching uncomfortably.

Knuckles looked at him for a second and then realized what had been below for most of the ride. "Oh," he said. He didn't know what else to say to this; he didn't want to make fun of Sonic and his water problem… not right now and not like this. He'd tease him about it when things were… more relaxed than they were right now.

"I'm… just sorry I kinda lost it there," Sonic continued, running a hand through his head spines, but he was looking at Knuckles again.

"It's okay," the echidna said. It seemed the thing to say to him right now. From observation, it was what people seemed to say in this sort of situation… "I wasn't exactly Mister Relaxed myself, was I?"

"Heh." Sonic smirked weakly. "I guess we're both a little stressed out or something. How about we forget about the last minutes and stick together to find Tails?"

Knuckles didn't know if he wanted to forget about the last minutes. Suddenly he felt kinda comfortable about at least the outcome of this weird conversation. It felt okay to him, almost like peace. He nodded anyway. He didn't want to risk this strange, but kind of welcome drop in tension. "Sounds a plan."

Sonic smiled. "Awesome. Let's juice then, we don't have all day, right?"

Knuckles nodded again. "Right. Let's hurry." A second later he realized Sonic was the wrong person to tell to hurry.

* * *

From afar, the house Tails and Sonic shared whenever the hedgehog felt like keeping in one place for a while looked small and peaceful. The morning sunlight poured brightly over the hills and cliffs of Mystic Ruins, turning the grass a shining deep green and spotting the sea below with flashing sparkles.

By now a good deal ahead of Knuckles, Sonic bounded up the stairs to the top of the hill the house stood on, ears perked in alert. He didn't know what to expect. A bunch of robots suddenly jumping him and starting to attack? Tails opening the door and asking if he wanted breakfast? From the looks and atmosphere Sonic almost thought it could be the latter, but he knew he was just letting the appearance lull him into a false security.

When the blue hedgehog stopped in front of the house, no robot came out to attack him. But no Tails came out either and the front door was locked and wouldn't open to Sonic entering the correct password into the small panel near it on the wall. For a moment the hedgehog stood, scratching behind his ear and pondering whether or not he had remembered the password for the security system correctly, then he shrugged it off and rounded the corner of the building, approaching the wide doors of the hangar. Most of the time when Tails was home they stood open, letting the sunlight in while the young fox tinkered with his machines in the workshop or overhauled the biplane. This time however the doors were shut and didn't move when Sonic tried pulling them open. Someone had put the lock from inside.

Frowning, arms folded on his chest, Sonic glared at the closed entrance for a moment, then he took a few steps back and began walking around the house, gazing up at the windows, roof and balcony. From the very edge of the cliff, he could see his bedroom window in the roof. It was closed, but the bathroom window at the far away corner stood slightly open. He still wondered how to get up there, as it was too high to jump, he'd tried that earlier, when he heard footsteps behind and turned over his shoulder to find Knuckles jog up to him, looking stern.

"When I said 'let's hurry', I didn't mean 'run away as fast as you can'," he huffed out, leaning his hands on his knees and gasping.

Sonic chuckled lightly, the tension of not knowing what was up with Tails momentarily melting at the sight of the echidna trying to recover his breath. "You know, I didn't run away, I hurried to our destination, and I didn't do it as fast as I could. I could go a lot faster… but then you'd never catch up."

Knuckles shot him a glare. "Fine, you're faster, I know that, okay?" He stood upright again, his left hand massaging stitches out of his side, but he was beginning to look mockingly smug again. "And as far as I can see, your oh so awesome speed didn't help you much. Forgot the keys?"

Sonic shook his head, a smirk on his face in spite of himself. "No, there aren't keys for the door. Tails installed some fancy security system, no idea how it works and what exactly it does, but instead of a lock with keys we have a panel near the door to enter a password to open it if it was locked. It is locked now and it won't open even if I enter the password."

Knuckles shrugged. "Maybe you got the wrong password?"

Sonic shook his head. "He never changes it without letting me know."

"Well… maybe the fake you that stole the Emerald made him change it?", Knuckles mused. "So we can't get in?"

Worry flooded Sonic again at the mention of the doppelganger and he felt his stomach constrict in a way not unlike the feeling of clinging to a gliding Knuckles' back and feeling yourself slowly sliding off when there was only water below. Suddenly Sonic didn't regret he hadn't had much for breakfast. "Yeah…" Unsurely he looked between Knuckles and the hangar portal. "Or maybe he found out I'm not me, I mean, that fake Sonic is not me and he locked himself in?"

Knuckles nodded slowly. "That'd be good. It'd mean he locked the bag guy out, right?"

Sonic nodded, too. "Yeah. If we're lucky, Tails managed to lock him out and is just hiding inside somewhere. If we're not…" He trailed off and shook his head strongly enough for his quills to rattle against one another.

Not bothering to complete Sonic's sentence and phrase out what they both thought, that it probably wouldn't be so easy, Knuckles looked at the house again. "Any ideas how we're gonna get in then?"

Sonic walked back a little and pointed his friend towards the roof. "The bathroom window is open. If I use the runway for a run-up, maybe I can make the jump."

The echidna raised a brow at him. "You can save your breath." Violet eyes briefly took in the walls of the house, then Knuckles walked up to the nearest wall, dug his knuckle-spikes into it and began climbing up, leaving tiny traces in the wall. Within seconds he was at the window, pulled it open and vanished inside.

Sonic stood waiting, tapping his foot on the floor. His imagination blessed him with images of a scared Tails hiding after having seen him outside, then he thought Tails was way too old to hide from stuff by now, but he couldn't help but come up with more unwelcome concepts of what it was like inside the house.

The uncomfortable moment ended when the loud clanking noises of Knuckles removing the bolt from the portal rang in Sonic's ears and the red echidna pushed the doors wide open. At once sunlight gushed into a hangar and workshop that looked reassuringly normal, with the Tornado right in its place and a few odd pieces of machinery standing around like usual.

Knuckles looked not very reassured. "I don't think anyone's here, Sonic," he said.

Sonic didn't comment, he just dashed past his red friend and bolted up the stairs to the living quarters. "Tails? Tails, if you're here, it's okay, it's us!"

No reply came, other than a muttered "So much about being cautious" from the echidna who'd followed him upstairs.

When the flat remained silent, the two split up and began searching the rooms. The living room, first room to the right, was tidy, with no dishes, bottles of Chaos Cola or anything of the sort lying around on the spacious sofa. The low couch table in front of it sat empty and when Sonic ran a finger over its smooth surface he drew a line in a fine coat of dust that lay over the entire table. Nobody had moved through this room, let alone put any plates, glasses, feet or toys on this table during the past two or three days at least.

Just where could Tails have gone… without the Tornado? The sickening knot of worry in Sonic's stomach tightened and he left the living room to take a look into his little brother's bedroom. It was a small room, with a tiny cupboard pushed into one corner, and a window that was a little too high up to look through properly unless you were the size of Eggman, and in that case you'd probably bang your head in the ceiling. Tails' bed took up most of the room. Usually Sonic knew his little bro to be rather orderly about it, but today the bed was unmade as if he'd just gotten out of it in a hurry.

"Hey, Sonic!"

Knuckles' call pulled the blue hedgehog out of his ponderings about the first trace of Tails he'd found and he went to search the echidna, finding him in his room. He stood in front of the cupboard and in spite of Sonic's expectations he didn't mention the mess that as usually occupied the entire floor with a single word. His eyes flicked over to the door just briefly when Sonic entered before returning to stare at the cupboard front. "Look at this."

Sonic needed a second to discover what Knuckles meant, but then he too spotted the deep black burn mark on one of the photos, right where his own face used to be between Tails and Knuckles'. "What the –"

The echidna nodded gravely. "That was my first reaction. Any chance Tails did this?"

Sonic shook his head. "No way. He has one of those pictures himself. You remember when we made them, after we won the Gran Priix? He loved them as much as I do… did." He reached out and ran a fingertip over the burn mark. "Looks like someone really didn't like that picture. But why?"

Knuckles shrugged, looking lost. "No idea. I don't see what made this one worse than the rest… other than that your ugly face was on it."

Sonic felt a short grin at the joke and was strangely grateful that Knuckles had said that. His finger trailed over the black spot, then he shook his head. "I wonder what did this. I mean, it burned right through the photo and into the wood of the door."

"Laser? Eggman's latest photo-burning creation of doom?"

The hedgehog shot Knuckles a look from under a raised eyebrow. Where had that odd moment of humor come from? But truth be told, Sonic appreciated it more than he could have said, thinking how it distracted him somewhat from the dreadful idea what a laser like that would do to Tails. "We have to find him," he mumbled.

Knuckles nodded, serious again and not bothering to ask if Sonic meant Tails or Eggman. The hedgehog guessed it was clear anyway and he cast a last look at the mutilated photo before walking out of the room again. Knuckles followed silently and they searched the rest of the top floor, even the small loft, but without finding a clue to what had happened.

In a much less than cheerful mood, the two friends returned downstairs. Sonic briefly checked the Tornado for damage, but it looked fine, the propeller pointing towards the open portal as if beckoning to leave for a flight.

The workshop itself was in the semi-messed up state it used to be in most of the time; Tails usually left tools and machinery lying around in it. The large working table was full of devices Sonic wasn't too sure on what they were and did and nothing he could see really helped giving him any clue what had happened here.

Probably hoping to find something of use there, Knuckles had dived under the table. To Sonic's surprise he came up quickly again, having a tight hold of a dark silvery object about the size of a football. "Look, it was stuck under the table!" He held it out at Sonic and let go of it, leaving the ball to float gently between them.

"Hey, isn't that…" Sonic poked a finger against the ball, bounding it to Knuckles again who waved it off and sent it floating back to the hedgehog who caught it in his hands. "One of funny floating balls from that base where we searched for your Emerald?"

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah. Tails brought it back with him, he wanted to examine it to see how it works… and he said…" The echidna looked at Sonic. "He said you could have it then because you liked them so much and he wanted to bring one home for you to have."

Clutching the ball more tightly, Sonic felt an anew rush of affection for Tails pour through him and he stared at the silvery ball. "That kid…"

Knuckles sighed. "But it doesn't help us that we have the ball, we don't even know what Tails did with it after he came here."

"Yeah…" Sonic nodded, but kept the ball in his hands as he slowly walked through the large room.

Knuckles leaned against the table, waving a hand at the surroundings. "The whole place looks like he's gone for days, but we don't even know when he left and why and –"

Sonic stopped dead in his pacing and stared up at the wall. His eyes had caught a red slowly blinking light in a corner. For a moment he stood and stared the camera right into its glassy eye. "I'm so stupid…"

A sharp, brief chuckle sounded from his red friend. "I've been telling you… What about the sudden enlightenment?"

Sonic pointed up, finally releasing the ball. "It's all on tape! Or a data crystal. Or something, but that hardly matters, right?" He whirled around to the echidna and dashed past him, dropping into the seat in front of the computer in a corner of the workshop.

Knuckles merely blinked, struggling to catch up. "What?"

On the screen, a loading symbol started spinning slowly. "Tails' security system," Sonic said, turning around in the chair. "He's got a camera up there, you know, in case someone breaks in and, dunno, steals something. It's still on, so it probably was on all the time."

Knuckles stared, a mixture of disbelief and annoyance on his face. "And you come up with that _now_? After we wasted… half an hour crawling behind cupboards and under tables?"

Sonic shrugged. "Hey, I'm sorry, okay?" In all seriousness, Sonic didn't know how the camera had gone past him. Back when Tails had installed it, Sonic had said it was a little overdone and that they'd probably never need it. Now he made a note to take it back.

* * *

"Now were is it?", Knuckles asked impatiently, standing next to Sonic and gazing at the screen. The hedgehog supposed he was still mad he'd forgotten about the camera.

"I wish I knew…" Sonic scrolled through a long list of symbols and text. He never bothered much with Tails' computer, let alone how the fox organized stuff in it and right now he regretted he'd never paid more attention.

"Great," Knuckles deadpanned. "Can't you, I dunno, search for it? Isn't there a glossary, like in a book?"

Sonic snapped his fingers. "You're a genius, Knux, no matter what people say." He clicked on a symbol resembling a question mark and a new screen popped up.

Knuckles still frowned, looking at Sonic instead of the screen. "I hate to remind you, but 'people' usually is you in that case."

Sonic shot him a brief grin. "Never mind that." The feeling of desperation he'd felt earlier had lifted considerably now that a chance to go on had appeared to them and Sonic felt more like himself again. They'd do this, someway.

"I'll make sure to remind you," Knuckles remarked dryly while Sonic typed 'security camera' into a box on the screen, causing another spinning symbol to appear.

A second later, a new file opened up. "That's it." Sonic smiled at the still picture. It showed him, staring up into the camera. Knuckles was standing at the table behind him and even the stairway was visible and the Tornado and the grass outside through the open doors.

"You look like an idiot," Knuckles said.

Sonic grinned and started a fast backwards play of the video. It looked pretty comical seeing himself and Knuckles walk around backwards. "You look like an idiot, too," Sonic noticed when the Knuckles in the video crawled under the table and stuffed the floaty ball down there.

The real Knuckles next to him grunted. "Do we have to watch ourselves walk around backwards until we find something or is there a quicker way?"

For a second Sonic frowned at the screen in thought. While he was undoubtedly better at computers than Knuckles, what wasn't so hard admittedly, he was nowhere near as good with them as Tails. He just never really bothered with them. But after a moment of staring at the screen, the hedgehog located a bar at the bottom of it with a small indication slowly running back on it. He clicked at a random other spot on the bar, near to the left end of it. The images of Knuckles and himself walking backwards through the workshop froze, then the display jumped and it was apparently night.

"When is that?", Knuckles asked.

Sonic shook his head. "No idea." He clicked at another place on the bar. "Hey, that's you and Tails!"

Knuckles leaned in closer. "That was the day I came here because… I thought you'd stolen the Master."

For once, Sonic decided to skip on the chance for teasing. "That's after we had that ace fight. Tails is patching you up."

The echidna nodded. "Yes. Can you go forwards?"

Sonic activated a fast forward play again and the two friends watched the following events until they saw themselves and Tails leave on the Tornado to track down the Master Emerald. For a while nothing showed but the empty workshop, and then they could finally watch what had happened to Tails after his return home.

* * *

In the room that had become the main laboratory in Aquatic Base, Tails was tied to a chair. The bonds cut into his wrists, elbows and ankles and his entire body was stiff and hurting from sitting in this forced position for so long. On top of that, an angry growling was pestering him from his stomach that hadn't seen food for a whole day. Metal Sonic was very mad about Tails' attempt at taking flight. He'd not given him any food, in the night his cell had been so cold Tails was sure the robot had turned off the heating just to torture him by making him spent the night with hardly any sleep not only due to fright but also due to the freezing cold, and first thing in the morning he'd brought Tails here, tied him to that chair, making sure he the bonds were tight and forced the young fox to tell him how to handle the last stage of their Emerald production.

By now, the liquid had completely crystallized and most of the machines had been turned off. Working robots had removed the tanks and instead seven brightly green glowing Master Emeralds sat on metal sockets, surrounded by a heavy force field that maintained their energies. The radiation was immense, and their fields fluctuated in a way Tails didn't even think he knew from Chaos Emeralds.

Metal Sonic was very pleased with himself. For more than an hour already he was walking around the collection of artificial gems, boasting aloud to Tails and any other potential listener how he'd rule the world, how every inferiors would have to kneel before him… To Tails he sounded like an audio player stuck on track repeat.

… What didn't make him any less scary.

Still, Tails was beginning to be more scared of the seven huge gems behind the force field than Metal Sonic. A mad robot was one thing… Mad forces of nature were something completely different. And with chaos objects, it was debatable if they even were nature… or something a lot more threatening.

Tails didn't know. He didn't care right now. He repeatedly glanced worriedly at the monitors, at the magnetic and chaos fields, at the temperature, the random chaos fluxes. Those things were unstable if he'd ever seen something unstable. The system of Chaos was based on having one Master and seven Chaos Emeralds it balanced out. Even the Sol Emeralds, which could be seen as a parallel universe's equivalent to the Chaos Emeralds, probably had a Master of sorts.

But seven Masters? If their balance worked anything like common scales, now there was way too much weight on one side of the whole thing. It couldn't hold out. Tails knew. He wished he could talk to Knuckles, he was sure the guardian would understand more of it. But Knuckles was not there, and for now all Tails could do was hope the force field held them nice and safe and that Metal Sonic wouldn't make anything worse once he became tired of declaring himself ruler of the universe in advance and got the idea to actually use those mad powers the fake gemstones held within.

* * *

_Tails stared back at the hedgehog person. "What… do you want from me?", he stammered._

" _You will help me harness the seven powers of chaos." The reply came back in the tone of an almost everyday statement… if it wasn't for the underlying threat and the mechanical sound of the voice._

" _Who are you?", Tails pressed out, his voice trembling as much as his body._

_Another, harder shudder ran through the young fox as in the stranger's face a pair of deep red eyes lit up, sending a piercing glow through the dark workshop. "You may have one guess, organic."_

Sonic hit the pause key, halting the recording. "Metal Sonic," he repeated dully. It was the third time they watched the video already. Sonic slowly shook his head, green eyes drilling into the picture of his robotic nemesis. After the disguise had fallen, he looked like Sonic remembered him looking. Sharp, deadly metal blades for spikes… and those red eyes. Those staring out of the darkness were one of the most dreadful things Sonic had ever seen in his life. He sometimes still had nightmares from the first time he'd seen those eyes, stabbing into his soul, the crimson glow of hatred and evil. Sonic had never really understood why Metal hated him so much. Probably it was his primary programming, hard-wired in before anything else.

Metal Sonic was also the enemy that had come closest to defeating him, the one closest to match his speed. Eggman had built him to mirror Sonic's own attacks and fighting style, and yet he had created something totally different. Yes, if he was honest with himself, Sonic knew he was scared of Metal, and he was even more scared now. Scared for Tails. "Just what does he want from Tails?"

Sonic realized only that he'd actually voiced his thoughts aloud when Knuckles replied to the question. "Apparently, he wants to 'harness the seven powers of chaos'," the echidna quoted. "And he thinks Tails can help him with that."

Sonic shook his head. "Why Tails? I mean, why not me? Or Shadow? Or you, being the guardian and big chaos guru? Why Tails?"

To the hedgehog's surprise, Knuckles didn't rise to being titled a 'big chaos guru'. If he really didn't mind it or was able to skip on it silently due to the situation was beyond Sonic, though. "I don't know, Sonic," the guardian sighed instead. "We don't even know where Metal could have taken Tails,"

Sonic shrugged. "We'll have to rely on a bit of luck then. Apparently he needs Tails for… something. He'll keep him prisoner somewhere. Can you imagine many places more suited for something like that than this freaky underwater base we got the Master Emerald from?"

Knuckles blinked, then shook his head. "Hate to break it to you, but it was across the ocean last time I checked. No running there. How do we get there quickly?"

Sonic's eyes flicked over to the Tornado.

"You want to take the plane?" Knuckles eyed the blue hedgehog suspiciously.

Sonic nodded. "Yeah. Maybe you're not aware of it, but the Tornado is originally my plane. I just let Tails have her and fly her. He loves it, and if I'm to be honest he's better a pilot than me. What doesn't mean I'm bad myself."

"Uh-huh…" Knuckles tilted his head, not looking very convinced.

Ignoring him, Sonic jumped up and into the cockpit. He reached blindly for the dashboard, but where he expected to find the keys ready, his fingers just went through an empty space. The blue hedgehog leaned down to look past the control stick at where the ignition keys should be. "Damnit!"

"What?" Knuckles looked up at him, clearly predicting another load of bad news. They'd had enough of those today already. "Something broken?"

"No." Sonic shook his head. "The keys are missing."

The echidna frowned. "Maybe they're just lying around here somewhere?"

Sonic looked down on his friend. "I'm afraid not. We've been looking everywhere; if they'd lie around, we'd have found them."

Knuckles folded his arms. "You usually miss on stuff if you're looking for something else," he pointed out.

Sighing, Sonic threw up his arms. He hated the idea of wasting more time with searching around when they should be up in the air as fast as possible to get to Tails. "Fine. Let's look around again."

The next ten minutes passed with the two of them rummaging through the entire workshop again. In the end, no tool remained where it belonged, half of a shelf's contents had come down on Knuckles' head when the echidna pulled on something and set off a chain reaction, and Sonic was sure Tails would be really mad at them when he came back. But neither of the two had found a thing just remotely resembling a key.

Sonic shook his head. "I told you they're not here. Metal must have taken them. Or blew them up. Or threw them into the sea. Or…" He tailed off, huffed a breath and finished with a little motivated "Or something."

Knuckles looked at him for a moment as if he'd wanted to throw out a comment, then apparently decided to drop it and just glanced around in the hangar for a few seconds before focusing on the biplane. "But without keys, we're stuck without a ride."

"We could…" Sonic scratched behind his ear. "…y'know, hot-wire it or something."

"Hot -?" Knuckles blinked. "You know how to do that?"

"In theory, yes." Sonic shrugged. "I've seen it done in movies."

The guardian groaned. "Great, we're depending on knowledge you obtained from watching movies…"

"Hey, it can't be that tough." Sonic walked up to the plane, studying it. "You start a motor with a strong electric current that comes from… the battery or something."

" _Or something…_ ", Knuckles echoed quietly.

Sonic however was starting to feel confident about his idea. "You need this ignition current to start the engine, and it doesn't matter what kind of engine. The Tornado for long doesn't run on fuels anymore, but has a ring energy engine. All we have to do is get a spark to start it so it begins turning and stuff."

"And _stuff_ ," the echidna repeated again, sounding a little hoarse.

Sonic shot him a wink. "You're enthusiastic as ever, Knux."

The echidna grimaced. "Since when do I ever like plans you come up with?"

"You never liked any of them," the hedgehog pointed out with a wide grin.

"Indeed." Knuckles' lips twitched a little as he fought off a smirk. "So, you were saying?"

Sonic snapped his fingers. "I was saying we hot-wire this plane now."

"Ah, yes." The red echidna shook his head, watching Sonic climb back into the cockpit.

Crawling half under the pilot seat to be able to access the bottom of the dashboard in spite of that damn control stick being really in the way, Sonic was still grinning. "I need a screwdriver or… something I can break this here open with."

"Break it open?" Knuckles stared up the side of the biplane. "Isn't there a way to open… whatever you're opening there without _breaking our ride_?"

Sonic sighed. "Look. This isn't exactly the way this thing is supposed to be started, okay? It's the brutal method. Now give me a tool I can use."

Knuckles let out a dismissive groan, looking around the messed-up workshop. He located something he thought was what Sonic wanted in a heap of random objects on the floor, picked it up and climbed up the double wings to hand it to Sonic and look at what the hedgehog was doing. "Here, will that work?"

Sonic gave it just a short look. "I guess." He reached under the dashboard again. The tip of the screwdriver caused a scraping noise until the hedgehog managed to wretch it into a gap between two pieces of cover. Sonic hit the end of the tool a few times, forcing the tip deeper into the gap, then he jerked it upwards. The panel cover gave out a very unhealthy, cracking noise and came down a bit.

"Is it… _supposed_ to sound that way?" Knuckles glanced down into the cockpit uneasily.

Sonic gave him a board grin. "You bet!", he claimed and as if to prove it yanked on the screwdriver again, harder this time. "I'm just persuading it to cooperate with us!"

Knuckles covered his eyes with one of his large hands. " _Chaos_ beware…"

It needed three more of what Sonic called persuasion attempts until a part of the mutilated cover came falling down. Carelessly Sonic dropped it into the seat behind the one he was in, then he reached into the new opening hole and pulled out a handful of cables. "Now we just have to find out which of these are the ones we need…"

Knuckles shot a look out between his thumb and fingers. "What happens if you get the wrong ones?"

"Uh, I dunno…" Sonic pulled on a cable, trying to figure out where it came from.

" _Great_ …" The echidna sighed. "You're gonna blow us both up…"

Nose stuck into the hole, Sonic replied without looking up. "I doubt this can blow us up."

"He says," Knuckles complained to no-one in particular. "And then we're all blown to bits anyway and –"

"Bingo!" Sonic's triumphant yelp interrupted Knuckles' bad forebodings. "These two cables come from the ignition key thing." He yanked them out of their sockets. "That means all we gotta do is – this!" Smiling like a winner, the hedgehog brought the two now loose ends together. A blue spark shot from one to the other, the engine gave out a sputter and the propeller twitched, but the motor didn't start up.

Knuckles had finally coaxed himself to put his hand down again. "Is it supposed to sound that way?", he asked again.

Sonic frowned thoughtfully. "I dunno." He tried again, getting the same choked noise out of the engine. "At least we got the right cables," the hedgehog noticed.

"Yeah, but it doesn't really get us anywhere, does it?" The red echidna lifted a mocking eyebrow.

For the moment Sonic was too concentrated trying to think like Tails and figuring out how this worked to react to his friend's teasing. "I think… we're not generating enough energy to really start the engine." He created another spark. "See? It starts and tries to turn over, but it can't…"

"Says our expert aircraft mechanic number one." Knuckles shook his head. "What are we gonna do, smart-ass?"

"We… I know!" Sonic jumped in his seat, startling the echidna to almost fall off the wing. "I'll do it again, and you spin the propeller when I do it."

"I… spin the propeller, of course," Knuckles repeated matter-of-factly. "What should that help us? You want me to spin it around all the time so we can fly?"

Sonic bit down a laugh. "No. I… I've seen people do that if motors don't start up. You have to help them, give them a push or something. The propeller maybe causes drag, or it's too heavy or whatever. I don't know. Shut up and just try it."

"I'm not the one talking lengthy statements about stuff he's got no idea of," Knuckles pointed out dryly, but he hopped down to get to the front of the plane and grabbed the propeller blades. "Just tell we when to do this and –"

Sonic started to bring the ends of the cables together, then realized something and dropped them again. "Wait!"

"What _now_?"

"You can't just stand _there_ ," the hedgehog realized. "If we do it and the engine lights up, the propeller will suck you in and chaff you to tiny pieces!"

Knuckles stared at him, then pulled his hands off the propeller as if it had electrocuted him. "Then what?"

Sonic shrugged. "I guess you do this kind of thing from behind the prop."

For a moment Knuckles looked up at the hedgehog as if he wanted to say something, then he dropped his hands to his sides with a submissive sigh and moved to climb back on top of the wings. Kneeling in the middle of the upper one, right behind the propeller, he could reach over and take a hold of one of its blades. "Okay now? I'm set."

Sonic nodded. "Good. I count to three. One. Two. Three!"

The blue hedgehog once more touched the cables together, and simultaneously Knuckles yanked with all his might on the propeller blade. Another sputtered noise sounded from the engine compartment, the whole biplane vibrated for a second, then the engine spun to life.

Knuckles quickly pulled his hand away to keep it from getting cut off when the strong wind of the propeller's downwash hit him in the face, blowing his dreadlocks behind his shoulders. Slowly the echidna turned around to Sonic. "I don't believe this actually worked."

Sonic was sitting in the pilot seat, in numb fascination listening to the steady sound of the idling engine and staring at the engine instruments that all slowly but steadily began to indicate normal operating conditions after a few seconds of warm-up.

"Sonic? Hello-ho?" Knuckles waved a hand in front of his face.

Pulling himself out of the awestruck daze, Sonic felt a grin forming on his face. "It worked! Aren't I the awesomest?!"

He received an indignant stare. Knuckles took a long breath, held it for a second, then let it out with a huff. "It was good," he allowed.

Still grinning like the idiot that just won the jackpot in Casinopolis' pinball machine, Sonic gestured behind himself. "What are you waiting for? Tails needs us. We wasted enough time already."

Knuckles nodded curtly and climbed into the passenger seat behind Sonic. "You're right. Get going."

"You bet I am." Sonic eased the throttle forwards gradually, taxing the biplane out of the hangar. "Don't worry, Tails, we're coming…"

Behind him, Knuckles shifted in his seat, reaching under his behind and pulling out the piece of broken cover. For a moment he looked at it, then dropped it into the space to his feet. "Sonic?"

The blue hedgehog was busy preparing the take-off and flicking various switches. "Yeah?"

Defeatedly Knuckles dropped against the back of the seat. "Tails is gonna kill us."


	23. Aquatic Base Act Two

The Tornado's wheels made the soft sound of rubber against sand as Sonic brought the biplane down on the beach and let it roll out to park it almost exactly where they had left it last time.

Sonic darkly looked at the control panel before him as he cut off the engine. Last time Tails had flown the plane, as he usually did. They'd have to quickly make sure he would be flying them back home.

The hedgehog heaved himself out of the narrow cockpit and jumped down to the sand. It was soft enough to let him sink in past the ankles and Sonic spent a few seconds pulling his feet back out and shaking the sand off his sneakers. When he turned around, Knuckles had climbed out of the plane as well and was looking across the beach, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"Just like last time," he said. "Nobody to see. It's like he's begging people to sneak in."

Sonic walked up to his friend's side and gazed over to the small hut at the opposite end of the beach that hid the entrance to the high-tech underwater base. "I guess he's trying to be not too obvious. I mean, if he'd have robot guards patrolling the beach, people would notice. Nobody looks twice at an old shed like that."

Knuckles nodded. "I suppose you have a point."

The blue hedgehog cocked an eyebrow in surprise at the echidna agreeing with him. "Then let's get going and hope that rusty blue tin can doesn't expect any visitors."

"I'd hardly call us that," Knuckles remarked, the growl that wasn't quite hidden in his tone hinting that he wasn't planning on being a friendly visitor at least.

Sonic's intentions were similar. In his mind, he dreamed of finding Tails and breaking the whole place down behind them as they left together. The idea of an enemy base blowing up, burning and falling apart had something strangely pleasing if you were angry enough. Now, he was angry. Very much so. But given the layout of the place, he knew he wouldn't get to tear it down as easily as any other base he'd smashed in his life. If you smashed the wrong parts of that crazy underwater maze, you'd drown right inside of it all.

Shaking himself at the mental image, Sonic fought to return his attention to the surroundings. It was almost midday by now and the sun was standing high up in the sky, heating up the sheltered beach fairly well even for the generally cooler autumn air. Down here, with just a mild breeze from the sea, you didn't feel much of the approaching colder season yet.

The water was shining a deep blue in the distance that smoothly turned into turquoise as it shallowed near the coast to turn a light green that flowed into white as the gentle waves rolled out on the sand. The slow rhythm of the sound would have felt peaceful to Sonic at any other time, but right now neither the beautiful scenery nor the soft noises would feel comforting. Instead, Sonic felt misplaced among them. The holiday looks of the place just didn't fit at all what he felt inside. Worry, a bit of fear, anger. Nothing like sandy beaches and palmtrees.

Going back into the underwater building also wasn't a top favorite on Sonic's list of plans. He hated the idea of getting under the surface of the sea, and doing so inside a building wasn't much less bad than doing so in open waters. He felt like he was running right into an idiotic trap. Maybe that was what Metal was after? Lure them into the base and then open up a couple of hatches to let in the ocean and drown them all? A mild shudder ran down the hedgehog's spine. No, he couldn't do that, right? He was a robot, he would get damaged in water.

Right?

Sonic's morbid thoughts were interrupted when they reached the shed and opened the door, passing the automatic doors hiding behind it without problems. The tunnel looked like Sonic remembered it, blank and long and quiet. In the silence of the place, the echo their footsteps caused on the metallic floor seemed ridiculously loud to Sonic's ears. Like Metal Sonic would be able to hear them already now, no matter how far away in the center of the base he might be.

The first thing that registered to the hedgehog as different from their last time taking this way was that the laser fences were active. The first few they encountered switched on and off periodically and it was relatively easy to get past them, the ones that followed didn't turn off anymore and they had to search around for switches to shut them down to pass. They actually managed to squeeze through one of them, but the gap between the lasers was so small Sonic almost cut off his quills on them and the broader-framed Knuckles hardly fit through at all. Tails might have it easier… but Tails wasn't there.

The silence was starting to feel really uncomfortable and Sonic cast about for a good way to start a conversation. Knuckles, since he was living on an isolated island all alone, never really seemed bothered by long silences, so Sonic couldn't expect his companion to help him out with a distraction.

"Why do you think he turned on the fences?", the hedgehog finally asked, stepping on another switch to turn off the pink lasers blocking their way.

Knuckles shrugged. "Beats me. To keep people from going in or out of this friendly place?"

"Yeah, sure." Sonic walked into the next part of the corridor that was still slowly winding downhill. "I just mean, it was pretty much an invitation for us last time. I still can't believe he stole the Master Emerald just to lock me in it and let you get it back. That doesn't make sense, you know?"

Silence.

"Knuckles?" Sonic stopped walking and turned back to face his friend. The echidna stood stiff and upright, head tipped slightly to the side and the amethyst eyes wide in… shock? Surprise? Sonic couldn't place the expression properly. "Knux? What's wrong?"

Knuckles moved his hand slowly through the air before him as though he wanted to feel it was still there. "I… Don't you feel that?"

Sonic turned his head around a few times cluelessly. The air felt cool on his skin and the atmosphere was as tense as it had been since they'd arrived, but he couldn't quite find much of a difference in anything. "Feel what?"

An oddly stricken look darted over Knuckles' face. "I'm not sure. It's like… the Master Emerald was nearby. I can feel the pulsing of the chaos field."

Sonic frowned. "But… the Master Emerald is back on your island, you know that. Right?"

The guardian nodded. "Yes, of course. It can't be here. And whatever is here has been here for quite some time already. Several hours at least. That's a residual field, and they only form over time."

Feeling compelled to scratch behind his ear just so he was doing _something_ , Sonic looked at Knuckles. "Aha. So, what is it then?"

In a sudden gesture of helplessness, the echidna threw up his arms. "I have no idea, okay?! It's a chaos field, we're still at the edge and it's weak here, but whatever causes it has to be something really powerful. It feels like the Master Emerald on the surface, it feels a little like a Chaos Emerald too, but it's neither of them. I don't know what it is, but it is dangerous!"

"Hey, okay, easy pal." Sonic shook his head, for a moment watching his friend. "And you're sure it's not because the Master Emerald _was_ here not too long ago? Maybe it, dunno, _stayed_? The field, I mean, not the Emerald."

"Yes!" Something reproachful lingered in the echidna's tone.

"Okay, just asking to be sure, you know?" Sonic looked around again, then back at Knuckles. "Where's it coming from?"

"I don't know." The red guardian seemed helpless again. "It's weird, even for a chaos field. It comes and goes and it's not strong enough for me to place it."

"Fine." Sonic shrugged. "Maybe it'll get clearer if we go on, huh?"

Knuckles nodded and followed Sonic as the hedgehog continued down the path. "Yeah, I think so."

For a few minutes they walked on in silence again, Knuckles preoccupied with the weird energy he picked up every now and then, and Sonic busy checking if the walls were still safely keeping all that water behind them outside and if he maybe could feel Knuckles' odd energy too. A few times, the hedgehog thought he'd felt a brief twinge at his nerves, a short shiver of chaos, but then it was gone again and he wasn't sure if it was really energy he felt or just his own nervousness. Chaos energy was easier to pick up when you were calm, or focusing on a strong enough emotion to actually tap into the power of it. Just that the unclear, subtle and somewhat dormant fear Sonic felt of the environment clearly wasn't as suited emotion to sense out for chaos energy on.

When the path started branching they picked random directions, left, right, straight ahead, whatever seemed somewhat logical to them. Quite frequently, they had to double back and pick a new route because their chosen track turned out to be a dead end.

It was at the sixth or seventh of these branches that they started to disagree on the way to take, Sonic wanted to go left, Knuckles obviously considered straight ahead the better choice.

"Where do you think you're going?", the hedgehog complained.

"Where do _you_ think _you're_ going, hedgehog?", Knuckles mimicked. "That totally looks like a dead end!"

"Does it? And who named you chief navigator?" Sonic folded his arms. In his eyes, left looked much less like a dead end than Knuckles' way.

The echidna was of course not sharing his opinion. "And who made you leader of the Tails rescue squad to decide where to go? Huh?"

Sonic suddenly chuckled. "Tails rescue squad?", he repeated. "Sounds good to me. If I can be leader, I'll let you be navigator."

Knuckles blinked, not quite catching up with the turn of events. "What?!"

Sonic grinned. "Get going and find Tails."

Knuckles stared at him for a little longer, then turned around and walked on, still seeming quite confused with Sonic. The hedgehog smiled and strolled after him.

* * *

The self-proclaimed Tails rescue squad had reached another intersection. They'd seen a felt thousands of them already, each time stopping their walk to discuss which way to take no matter that Knuckles had been named navigator ("You chose last time!" or "We've been going left three times in a row now!"). To be fair, both of them knew they had no idea where they were going.

The weird energetic feeling Knuckles had picked up when they came seemed to come and go at random and from everywhere around, the echidna was angry with himself for not being able to place it more clearly and angry with Sonic because he kept asking about it.

Sonic on the other hand was, like last time, quite nervous with the knowledge that there was a whole ocean full of water everywhere around them and logically he as well wasn't in the most cheerful of moods.

Additionally, both of them were worried about Tails and wanted to find him as soon as possible. Sonic considered they'd probably be getting along better if they'd run into any robots yet, not only because it would tell them they were probably heading in the right direction, but mainly because it would have given them both something to smash and let out their frustration on something else but each other.

"How about we spilt up for a moment?", the hedgehog suggested , interrupting a lengthy rant Knuckles had started about what he thought was Sonic's lack of orientation.

The suggestion was in so far a success that it caught Knuckles enough by surprise that his accusing Sonic of running them in circles stopped in mid-sentence. "What?"

"We could split up," Sonic repeated. "Not completely, I mean. Seriously, most of the ways we've taken so far after just a minute turn out to be dead ends or lead back to where we came from. How about you go right, I go left, we try each way for let's say two or three minutes and then come back here. Maybe we found out one is a dead end by then, or we find out where to go to find Tails."

Knuckles looked at him for a moment. "Okay." He took a slow breath and gazed along the right corridor up to where it ended at another water-tight automatic door. "Okay," he repeated. "Maybe you're right."

Sonic smiled a little as the echidna turned away. "Oh, and Knux? My sense of orientation doesn't suck."

Knuckles turned back over his shoulder, looking abashed. "I know," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, it's just…"

Sonic nodded. "I know. We really have to find Tails; someone has to stop us from arguing just because of nerves…"

The echidna flashed a grin. "There's just one of us here who's got problems with nerves because of a bit of water around."

Sonic grimaced. "At least I've got a reason to be nervous…"

For a short moment Knuckles looked first unsure if he should be insulted again and Sonic was worried he'd started another stupid, pointless argument neither of them needed right now, but then something else darted over the echidna's face and to Sonic's surprise he let it go. The amethyst eyes looked almost as if he wanted to say something, though.

"What?", Sonic asked.

"Nothing." Knuckles shook his head. "Not now. Three minutes Sonic. Don't be late." He turned around and ran into his corridor.

Sonic shrugged to himself and walked into the other one. The way seemed straight forward and the next doors he passed opened automatically as he approached them. After just a minute, he found himself entering another one of the large, round and high rooms. There were three doors on the ground level aside of the one he'd come from and another one on a platform close to the dome's ceiling. He knew by now that there had to be a second floor and maybe even more than two levels, but there didn't seem a way for him to get up there. If the other doors turned out useless he would need Knuckles to climb up there.

But first he would try out the three he could reach himself. Eyes sweeping the room for anything suspicious, Sonic walked up to the first door to his right. Unlike the most of the others, it didn't open automatically but had it switch on the floor next to it. Sonic stopped in front of the door. A sign was pinned to it.

"Restricted. Trespassing prohibited," the blue hedgehog read aloud. He frowned at the sign, twitching his ears. "Uh… worth a try." He walked towards the switch. Most other the places that had been restricted he'd seen in his life had either been shortcuts or directly led to something someone wanted to hide.

He stepped on the switch and it lit up in bright blue, followed up a light buzzing sound when the seal of the door released and it started to open.

A second later Sonic wished he hadn't stepped on the switch. A flush of water leaked out the slit in the opening door that creaked as if a great force was pushing against it. "Nonononono!" Hastily Sonic jumped off the switch, on it again, attempting to close to the door before it had fully opened.

But the switch didn't seem to work anymore and with a loud crash the two halves of the door shattered out of their frame. The rushing and splashing sound that followed it poured icy dread through Sonic's body and he scrambled backwards into the room in the utter anguish only one thing in the world had even been able to provoke in him.

There was no escape however. The water that flooded the room past the broken door in one mighty wave pressed Sonic against a wall with a force he couldn't resist. Pancaked against it, he tried in vain to struggle past the pressure and free himself. The roar of the rushing flood was deafening even past the panicked pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. Within mere seconds the water had covered him completely, and fully submerged in the cold liquid from the outside and even colder panic that froze his blood from the inside Sonic was too paralyzed to move even when the pressure finally slackened and the current of the flood slowly dragged him away from the wall.

Sonic struggled then, his eyes burning in the salty water, rowing his arms and kicking his legs in a futile attempt to reach the stirred-up surface. But it was climbing higher and higher, his chance of reaching it retreating ever faster as the large room flooded with more and more water.

Lungs threatening to burst and his head pounding and dizzy, the blue hedgehog fought against the water's force with the strength of total desperation. Air… He needed air. It was the only thing on his mind anymore.

But the current was strong, pushing him around as it pleased, and his water-logged body was heavy. Even his quills alone seemed to weigh a ton.

The urge to breathe was growing to where he could hardly fight it anymore, but at the same time he was losing feeling in his body and his muscles slowly refused to struggle. He felt almost as cold as the water around now and the light that had filtered down from the surface was dimming rapidly.

A last bubble of air escaped Sonic's lungs as he floated with the current, was pushed against a wall again and then just hung there, life draining away, but he didn't care any longer.

He felt a cold hand grip around his left ankle, there was a short jerk and his body pressed against the side of something. The shadow held around his waist and dragged him along and darkness swallowed Sonic up in its cold silence.


	24. Submerged

He couldn't breathe. His throat and mouth were full of water and it flooded back into his lungs even as he tried to gasp.

"Sonic!" Sonic didn't know who was shouting. He didn't care. He was sure he was dying, then why couldn't it just be quick and simple? Instead, something hard smashed against his back with such force that he thought it would break his ribs and spine. The pain and the water almost did it; Sonic almost slipped back into unconsciousness. It would have been mercy.

A mercy he clearly wasn't granted, just a second later the same hard strike impacted his back again and this time it forced a gush of water out both his mouth and nostrils. The sensation let tears flow freely out of the corners of Sonic's tightly closed eyes.

"Come on… _Breathe_ , will ya! Damnit, Sonic!" Why couldn't they just shut up and let him suffocate peacefully? Sonic felt as if he was shaken, then the flat and solid as stone thing was hammering rapidly against his back, though thankfully not as hard as before. Another flood of water shot up Sonic's throat and he coughed and retched and gasped for air in between. It hurt, but when it finally began to cease after what felt like a dreadful eternity, he wasn't so sure if he was really dying anymore. Slowly he was regaining some feeling for his body. His lungs burned, right now all muscles ached, he was cold and he was shaking all over.

"It's okay, hey…" What he was beginning to think could be a hand was still pounding his back, although it gradually turned into an almost gentle patting. Sonic coughed up another bit of water. "Yeah, that's right, get it all out," the voice encouraged him, iit was beginning to sound vaguely familiar to his hazy brain and ears one of which still seemed to be full of water. He could feel the warm body that had to belong to the voice, the hand patting his back, his chest lying against what had to be a leg and there was another hand on his shoulders.

Although hardly any water came up anymore, it took minutes until Sonic could stop coughing. Feeling faint and exhausted he was by now glad for the assistance when the hands gently turned him around, held him half upright for a moment, then he was leaned with his back against a cool wall. One hand remained on his shoulder, steadying him, the other wiped water off his brow and gave his cheek a light slap. "Sonic. Sonic?! Sonic!"

In spite of feeling like he really _wanted_ to pass out again, Sonic dragged his eyes open. Everything swam before them and he had to blink a couple of times until he had cleared the tears and found himself looking into a pair of dark violet eyes under a furrowed brow, the red fur on it dripping wet. It took Sonic several seconds until he'd pushed past the daze and found a name to connect to the face. "Knux…?"

The echidna sighed with a small shake of his head that let the water from his brow drop onto his nose. "Thank Chaos, _Sonic_ … What did you think you were _doing_ , trying to die on me like that?"

Sonic didn't answer. After the few seconds it took for Knuckles' words to get past the thick syrup in his mind and make sense, he didn't know what to say.

But Knuckles didn't seem to want an answer right now anyway. He brushed a hand through his soaked dreadlocks, pushing them back over his shoulders, then he reached for Sonic' arm and his fingers slipped under the cuff of Sonic's right glove. Feeling oddly detached from the whole situation, the hedgehog realized Knuckles wasn't wearing a glove on this hand. Shiny with water still clinging to them, the spines on his knuckles looked all the more sharp and wicked. Not like a hedgehog's spines, or like Knuckles' very similar head quills. Now that he looked at them, it seemed weird he'd survived being punched with that clawed fist as often as he had.

"Sonic? You still with me?" Knuckles' other hand, still holding his shoulder, gave him a light shake.

The blue hedgehog forced himself to nod. Nodding made his head spin... For a moment, he just watched Knuckles again. Only now he figured he was trying to feel his pulse. After a few more seconds the echidna let go off his wrist and laid his hand on Sonic's chest. "Can you take a slow, deep breath for me?"

Sonic complied without bothering to wonder about the why. His chest still hurt a little, but it felt good to breathe. Alive.

Knuckles' hand remained on his chest for a while, apparently the echidna seemed to find his breathing strangely interesting. Sonic thought he should mind the proximity, but Knuckles' hand felt almost warm to his chilled skin and in a way the touch was grounding. Something else to focus on but the dizziness and the water and the dread still pulsing in his veins.

"Does it hurt?", Knuckles asked, watching his every exhale, brow still furrowed and eyes tight at the corners.

"Not much now, really," Sonic replied slowly, still feeling muddled and distant. "But I've got water in my ear..." It made the world seem all the more muffled.

The echidna looked taken aback. "Oh," he said, seeming at a loss for words. "I… guess it'll come out eventually," he added then, as an afterthought, as if he had figured he should be saying something.

Sonic tried to sit a little more upright against the wall in his back. Gradually the haze in his head was beginning to lift and he noticed he had stopped shaking so much. "What happened?", he asked. It seemed the thing to say to him now.

Knuckles looked at him seriously, but he let go of him. "I was going to ask _you_. My way turned out a dead end, so I came to follow you. When I opened the third door, a high wave came flooding in. I managed to swim into the big round room that was behind the door after the part of the corridor had been flooded and the current ceased. The room was two thirds underwater already; it seemed to come through one of the doors that stood open." He tucked off his second glove, gathered up the first from where it lay on the floor to the side, wrung them both out and proceeded pulling them back on before giving Sonic another long look. "I almost didn't find you. You're lucky your shoes are red; in a room with blue walls and blue water you don't really see a blue hedgehog trying to drown himself."

Sonic didn't say anything. His head still felt empty, the knot of dread was still tight in his stomach and he failed to come up with something remotely sensible to say to Knuckles.

"How'd you get the whole room underwater?", the echidna asked, seeming calmer than before. For a moment Sonic envied the calm, even if Knuckles was probably faking it.

"I…" He blinked slowly. "I… opened a door, I think." Even dazed as he was he found it a good idea not to tell Knuckles that it had been labeled as 'restricted' and 'trespassing prohibited'. "And then there was all this water and…" He shuddered. He didn't want to go through it again and relive it. It seemed fairly obvious what happened then.

Apparently Knuckles thought so too, because he didn't push any further. "I've got us out through a door to a higher level on a balcony-like thing that was still above the water," he said instead. He glanced to the left. "So far the door holds close… Whoever built this place really thought about the sealing in case of something like that…"

Sonic just nodded numbly and shivered again. He was cold.

Knuckles was looking at him again with that strange look out of dark eyes. "You know, for a moment I thought I was too late."

"I thought so too," Sonic admitted quietly. "I'm really glad you weren't. Thanks…"

A crooked expression slipped over Knuckles' face. It was better than a grimace, but it didn't make it to being a smile either. "I'd say I'd do it again, but I'd prefer not to have to."

"Yeah." Sonic nodded. Nodding was beginning to be less nauseating. "Same here."

Knuckles' eyes flashed back towards the door. "Do you think you can walk for just a bit? I'd like to get a few more doors between us and the ocean."

"I told you underwater buildings suck, didn't I?" Sonic tried a smile of his own but it wouldn't quite turn out right.

"You did. I'll really consider listening next time." Knuckles carefully helped him to his feet and there was a flash of concern on his face as he slung Sonic's arm over his shoulders to support him.

Still rather dizzy, Sonic didn't speak while they walked past three more sealing doors and ended up in another pretty large room, through this one wasn't round and not as high as the others. Five doors led to probably more rooms and corridors.

Knuckles made Sonic sit down in a corner again and worriedly looked at him for a moment. Then he stood upright, his long quills still dripping water to the floor and his red fur clinging to his body. "I'll go check out a little where these doors can get us. I'll try to get some bearings in here and find out where to go. You just take a few minutes, rest up a little, okay?"

Sonic nodded and let his head fall back against the wall, his wet quills bending slightly under the weight. He closed his eyes. A few minutes sounded awesome.

* * *

A few minutes turned into more than an hour. The tightness of fear and panic gradually faded from Sonic's stomach during the first minutes of leaning in the corner. The dizziness followed after another few minutes. He could breathe properly again, but after the most immediate dread had gone and he didn't hurt anymore, a numbing grogginess fell over him.

Sonic wasn't a stranger to the feeling. He'd been lying around like that in several water zones before, tired and cold and waterlogged after almost drowning. He knew it would lift after a while. Truth be told, he almost enjoyed it. The tired stupor was much better than the utter terror before.

Dazedly he lay against the wall, watching Knuckles disappear through one door, then he just stared into the empty room before him, then Knuckles came back after a while just to leave through another door. The echidna didn't bother Sonic and after a while the hedgehog drifted into sleep.

When he woke up he was still leaning in the corner, his head resting against the wall to his right. His fur and quills were only damp anymore and he didn't feel as cold as he used to. In fact, he felt pretty normal again. Only his clothing was still really wet and his left ear still seemed to be full of water.

Opening his eyes, Sonic spotted Knuckles sitting cross-legged about a meter away from him. One of the echidna's shoes lay on the floor, while he was holding the other one up in front of his face, gazing into it with a frown on his face and shaking it a little.

A grin darted over Sonic's face. Something about his friend looked pretty comical right now. "What are you doing?", he asked, sitting upright and reaching for his ear, twisting it a little and drilling a finger into it.

Knuckles put his shoe down and actually genuinely smiled at him. "Hey, you're awake!"

"Yup." Sonic smiled back, in spite of his ear refusing to empty of the water. He laid his head to the side, turned the ear with one hand while softly knocking against the other side of his head with the other. Finally there was a small "plop" sound and he could hear properly again. "Ah, better…" He drilled his finger into the ear again, trying to remove the water completely.

Knuckles was eying him weirdly. "Are you feeling better?"

Sonic nodded. "A lot. I think I'm okay."

The red echidna smiled faintly. "You fell asleep after a while and I thought it'd be the best I just left you to it."

"Thanks. There's not much a nap can't make better." He grinned, following Knuckles' example and beginning to take off his shoes, then his socks and gloves as well. Trying to press the water out of a glove, he shot a glance at Knuckles again. "So, what'd I miss?"

"Not that much. Two of the ways we could take from here are impassable, they both end at doors that won't open at all and I wasn't too eager to try and break through them. There's another that leads to a pretty big kind of storage room full of containers and stuff. I wasted twenty minutes trying to see if there was a way out through it just to find none." Knuckles shrugged, then started knocking his flat hand against his shoe's sole. "The two other ways each are quite long and seem to go on. I tried each for a bit, but I think we'll just have to take our chances with one of them."

Sonic switched over to his second glove. "How much time did we lose?"

Apparently satisfied with the result of his knocking technique, Knuckles pulled his shoe back on his foot and picked up the second one. "An hour, I think. But we didn't know where we were going even before…"

Somehow Sonic had the odd feeling Knuckles had said that to make him feel better about it, although that wasn't much like him. "You think Metal is still in this laboratory room you found the Master Emerald in last time?"

Knuckles shrugged while still holding his shoe. "I've got no idea. Last time, there wasn't even anyone there."

Pulling back on his gloves, Sonic gave up trying to get the remaining dampness out of his sneakers rather quickly. "Tails is here. I know it."

For a moment Knuckles looked at him warily, then he shrugged and put on his second shoe. "We'll just have to find him."

"We will, Knux. We will." Sonic slipped his sneakers back on.

Knuckles stood up in a smooth movement and held out his hand at the hedgehog. Sonic took hold and Knuckles pulled him to his feet, looking firmly into his eyes. "Then we better hurry."

Sonic nodded. "If Tails finds out we argued on the way to rescue him and that I took a nap here, he'll be mad at us…"

Knuckles suddenly grinned in spite of everything that had happened. "Wait until I tell him what you did to his plane…"

Sonic groaned. "Yeah… We better find him quickly and hope he's happy enough to see us to forgive us."

Knuckles nodded. "Let's hurry, then."

Like several times before, the two continued into another blank corridor and past more large steel doors. But now, they ran side-by-side peacefully and no more arguments started. Somehow, without saying so, both were glad the other one was still there to run with them.

* * *

For a while as they continued on in silence. Sonic was totally sure they had gotten lost. Every room they got into, be it the corridor-like, long ones, the rectangular rooms or the high, round domes looked exactly like on they'd been in before, and like those they'd seen on their first trip here. Secretly Sonic wondered how many exits the base might have, after all they had apparently blocked the way back to where they'd come from. They needed to find another way out when they found Tails.

If they found him. Sonic was uncomfortably aware of the fact neither Knuckles nor he himself had any idea about the layout of the place, how big it was, let alone where in the giant underwater building they were, had been before and were headed right now.

"Can you still feel that chaos field?", the blue hedgehog asked. It might as well be their only guidance. Last time, they had followed Knuckles' Master Emerald sense. It would make navigating this place a lot easier if they had a beacon like that again.

"Yes." Knuckles shot him a brief look. "It's getting stronger."

Sonic smiled a little at that. "So, that means we're getting closer."

Knuckles shrugged vaguely. "I don't know."

"You don't know? But I thought…" Sonic waved a hand. "I thought you track down the Master Emerald, or the Chaos Emeralds, or a piece of the Master Emerald? Isn't that the same?"

The guardian's head moved in a way Sonic could neither place entirely as a shake, nor as a nod. "It's not that simple, Sonic! I'm not a walking, talking Chaos compass, okay?!"

"Hey, chill it, will ya?!" Sonic drew a deep breath, brushing down his spines with his flat hand. "I just thought you could maybe, you know, know the vague direction? 'Cause that'd really help us."

Knuckles sighed. "As I said, it's not that simple, Sonic. You don't understand."

Sonic tilted his head. "Explain it, then. Maybe I'll get it."

For a second Knuckles looked ready to openly declare his doubts, but then he apparently decided against it. "Fine. You see, the Master Emerald, or its shards when they scattered, or also a Chaos Emerald… They have a… somewhat… logical energy field. It gets stronger the closer you get, but not in a constant way, not like the heat increases the closer you get to a fire. It's almost random; a chaos field can be the same strength over a large space and suddenly get stronger by a lot within less than a meter. That makes it hard tracking down the source, you know?"

Sonic nodded. "I guess I get it so far, yeah."

The Emerald guardian almost seemed surprised about that. "Okay… Good. Now the problem with this chaos field here is… it doesn't behave like any other chaos field I know. From the sort of energy… I would almost say it's like the Master Emerald. But from the way it pulses and how the fluxes and waves come and ebb… it's very much like a Chaos Emerald."

Sonic frowned. "So… you think it's some weird kind of hybrid or what?"

Knuckles' eyes snapped wide open at the idea, and he suddenly looked afraid to Sonic. "I don't know. But I don't like it."

"Hmm." The corridor they'd been walking through ended at another door that opened as soon as Sonic activated the corresponding switch. When the hedgehog stepped into the round, big room that followed, a sensation like a shiver ran down his back and the tips of his fingers tingled. It lasted just a second, but Sonic stopped dead in his walk. "I felt it, too."

Knuckles turned around. "What?"

"The field," Sonic clarified. "I felt it. It was just a second. It was almost as if I'd touched an Emerald. It's gone now again."

The echidna regarded him thoughtfully. "I think you felt the pulse it just made."

"You felt it too?"

Knuckles nodded, looking strained. "Yeah. Spooky, isn't it?"

Sonic grimaced and nodded back at him. "You can really say that." He shook himself and fought to return his attention to the surroundings. "Hey, what's that stuff?"

At the other side of the large round room, several things that looked like giant glass containers stood around, from all Sonic could tell empty and without visible purpose. He walked closer.

"What do you think these are? I mean, you don't exactly need an aquarium in an underwater building, right? … Or, seven aquariums," he corrected himself after a second.

Knuckles had walked all the way up to the weird glass containers as well, staring at them as if they were toxic. "Sonic…?"

"Yeah?"

"I think… there was chaos energy in these things."

Sonic blinked. "Chaos energy. In these aquarium thingies?"

Knuckles nodded. "Yes." His voice shook a little as he said it, a barely concealed quiver of uncertainty, or worry, perhaps of fear? Then he reached out a hand and traced his fingertips along the glass, but quickly withdrew his hand and stared at his glove as if there was a mark on it you could actually see.

"You sure?", Sonic dared to ask. Instead of an answer, Knuckles suddenly grabbed his arm and before the hedgehog knew what was happening, the echidna had pressed his palm flat against the glass. A jolt like electricity ran up Sonic's arm and his quills stood on end instantly. "Whoa!"

Knuckles let go of him. "Want to rethink your question?"

Sonic stared at his hand. It still tingled even after letting go of the glass. He just shook his head, unable to answer, neck still prickling.

Knuckles' eyes trailed over the glass tanks. "I don't know what they did with these things, but if they were really full of that much chaos energy… we got a _huge_ problem on our hands, Sonic."

Numbly the hedgehog looked at him, finally dropping his hand to his side. "I'm afraid you're right."

Knuckles pointed at the next door. "Quick. We need to know what Metal Sonic did. If you believe in anything at all, pray to it we're not to late."

Sonic gulped. Something about that look in Knuckles' suddenly haunted eyes was giving him the creeps


	25. Seven Masters Too Much

By now Knuckles could tell for sure they were heading in the right direction. With every step, it felt more like walking into the Temple of Chaos, or into the Emerald chamber at Hidden Palace back when it still served as the place to keep the powerful gems. The air he breathed and the very ground under his feet were brimming with chaos energy, vibrating with the random fluxes of the field.

Knuckles was no stranger to chaos energy. The opposite even, he'd grown up in the Master Emerald's presence and all his senses were atoned to it. It was a part of him, always there, a force that acted as constantly on him as gravity. Also other chaos objects, like the Chaos Emeralds or the golden rings, fell in with the tone, the frequency and melody of the Master Emerald. It was the balancing pole of the entire system; the Master's rule was control, a chaotic one, but reasonable to Knuckles. In the chaos sort of way it was logical. He could read it, feel it, breathe it. He knew in a way Sonic could too, any Chaos Controller could.

What he felt right now was different. In spite of their chaotic nature, the Master and Chaos Emeralds, even the weaker golden rings, contained patterns that were distinguishable in their frequencies, in the way their fields would grow stronger and ebb away again, in the way the powers bounced off each other or multiplied a compatible force. The echoes of chaos power that flowed all around him now showed no pattern, no inner logic, not even a color.

Knuckles was used to the chaos energy being made of seven colors, seven forms, like the colors of the rainbow are all contained in white light. Like sending light through a prism and splitting it into its rainbow components, also chaos energy could be split if you concentrated. The seven Chaos Emeralds were splits, each color, each power included in a separate Emerald. The Master Emerald's energy, while its light was green, contained all the seven forms of chaos, also the golden rings did. If you knew to access the power, you could split it yourself, see the seven colors. It wasn't possible here, whatever the power really was. It wasn't normal chaos energy. It was something more chaotic, as ridiculous as that sounded, something Knuckles had never seen before, and he was scared of it.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Sonic spoke up at Knuckles' side, the sudden words tearing the echidna out of his thoughts.

"I know what you mean," he mumbled, shooting a look at his blue friend. Sonic's ears were perked in alert and his quills seemed to stand up a little. Maybe he too could feel them prickling with this weird, distorted form of chaos energy around.

Sonic tugged at his bandages. Knuckles suspected they had tightened on drying and felt uncomfortable to him now, but in light of the fight that was probably to be expected when they finally found Metal Sonic, Knuckles supposed it was better they stayed on and offered some protection to the healing wounds underneath. The echidna cleared his throat and Sonic stopped pulling on the bandages. "What do you think he's got? I mean, there's chaos energy _everywhere_!"

Knuckles shook his head. "I've got no idea. I've rarely ever felt a chaos field that strong. Or that unbalanced and out of focus. Whatever it is, it's very unstable."

A frown slipped over Sonic's brow. "So, it's not just me trying not to listen to my gut feeling that tells me to turn around and get the hell outta here as fast as I can."

Knuckles raised a brow at him. "No." For a short moment, the guardian was stricken by the odd sense that it maybe was the first time his and Sonic's gut feelings agreed on anything.

If the hedgehog had realized the exact same thing wasn't clear to Knuckles, but he grimaced and huffed out a "Great."

Another minute passed in silence as they walked on, then they stood in front of another door. It opened with a switch and the two friends entered another one of the giant dome-like rooms. Having gotten on a higher level after the incident with the flooding room, they ended up on a half-round balcony of sorts that was overlooking the room.

Knuckles stopped right after walking through the door. He felt like he'd run head-first into a solid wall, so strong was the wave of chaos power that pounded him right in the face. For a second he saw stars, his sensitive senses only slowly growing used to the intensity the field had in here, like one's eyes have to adapt to the light after coming from a darker to a much brighter place, and when the moment of dizziness passed and the red echidna could see clearly again, he still stayed rooted where he was, eyes wide open and unable to do anything but stare into the room below.

In the middle of it, a force field surrounded seven glowing large gemstones that in looks, size and the color of light they gave out so closely resembled the Master Emerald Knuckles didn't believe his eyes. On first look, he would have almost believed he saw seven Master Emeralds. On second look however, he realized the differences. There was something very… Master Emerald-ish about those things, but at the same time, they were something totally different. The energy that flooded over the entire room almost was Master Emerald energy, but not quite… A little like Chaos Emeralds, too, minus the giant size, but the thrum of energy was more Master than Chaos Emerald, though a very strange, distorted form of it.

"Are those… _Master Emeralds_?" Sonic too seemed to experience definite problems closing his mouth.

Knuckles was only able to slowly, disbelievingly shake his head. "No. Yes. I… don't know. They're almost like the Master. But they're… _dark_ …"

Sonic didn't seem to mind that even Knuckles himself thought what he'd just said didn't sound very to the point. The hedgehog also still stared at the giant gemstones, at the green light everywhere around. "Metal made… _copies_. Of the Master Emerald. That's what he needed it for."

The guardian nodded numbly. "I guess… But… they aren't really copies. They aren't Master Emeralds. But they aren't something else either…" Even as he spoke, Knuckles was aware his statements were lacking sense.

"Maybe…" Sonic shrugged. "Maybe you can't copy something like the Master Emerald. Tails once copied a Chaos Emerald, you remember? I could use it to cause Chaos Control, but it was a lot weaker than a normal Emerald. And it was… very different, in an odd way I can't describe."

Knuckles shook his head again. He couldn't stop. "I just can't believe he did that. This is just so… wrong. The whole balance of chaos is in danger. It's based on seven Chaos Emeralds and one Master. Having seven Master Emeralds more, let alone in one place… It's like putting tons of weight on one side of the scales and hardly anything on the other."

Sonic's hands curled into fists. "Yeah. That's something Metal must have inherited from Eggman. He never thinks of the consequences of what he does either."

"But _how_ , Sonic? How did he make seven fake Master Emeralds?"

The blue hedgehog's eyes narrowed and for the few seconds he looked grim his face bore a striking resemblance to Shadow. "That's what he needed Tails for. That's why he kidnapped him, why he sealed me away to have me out of the way. Tails can make a fake Chaos Emerald. Metal must have forced him to make those fake Master Emeralds for him."

"He shouldn't have done that! He could have refused! How -!"

"Knuckles!" Sonic turned to him, grabbing hard at his arms, and gave him a shake. "He's a child! He was alone, and scared, and he doesn't have a chance against Metal Sonic on his own! He would have killed him! He didn't have a choice!"

Knuckles blinked. Of course, Sonic was right. Nothing of this was Tails' fault. He was just a victim. A victim they'd come to save… The echidna sighed. "You're right, of course. I'm sorry… this is just…"

"Too much, I know." Sonic let go of him and turned back to the room below. "We have to find him."

Knuckles nodded. "Yes. And we have to destroy those fake Emeralds. Imagine what'll happen when they come close to a Chaos Emerald. I know it can happen that Chaos Emeralds explode when they get too unstable."

Sonic stared. "All that energy…"

Knuckles nodded. "Yes. We should do all we can to keep that from happening."

For a moment Sonic looked between Knuckles and the fake Emeralds. "What if… what if we destroy _these_ things? They aren't Chaos Emeralds. Will they explode as badly?"

"The heck, Sonic, I don't know!", Knuckles snapped.

Sonic took at step back at the glare shot at him. "Chill it, okay?!"

Knuckles forced himself to take a deep breath. "Sorry… I… I don't think they'll explode like a Chaos Emerald. They would probably explode, yes. But a lot about them is like the Master Emerald. When the Master Emerald sustains damage, it breaks apart. But looking at how unstable these things are… I guess we'd better prepare for the worst."

"So, we better see we aren't around anymore when they blow up, right?" Sonic tried a grin.

For a moment, Knuckles looked at him. It wouldn't work like that. Someone had to destroy the fake Emeralds. Someone had to be around when it happened. The guardian was entirely aware that he was the only one remotely capable of containing and controlling this out-of-control power. He had to stay, but he would make sure his friends were a safe distance away when it happened.

He forced himself to smile at Sonic. "Yeah, we better do that."

Sonic's attention had already returned to the room below, but he wasn't looking at the artificial Master Emeralds. "Look! There's Tails!"

Knuckles quickly followed the hedgehog's outstretched arm. Down below, one of the doors to the room had opened and Metal Sonic was striding in, pulling a distressed looking Tails harshly by the arm. Knuckles ground his teeth. "That monster is hurting him!"

Sonic was already halfway through jumping down right away to attack. "Not if I can help it!"

Knuckles seized at Sonic's arm, holding him down. "Wait. We're endangering Tails if we just jump Metal Sonic while he's holding him like that!"

Sonic looked between Knuckles, Metal Sonic and his hostage, the fake Emeralds, Knuckles again. "Okay, but I'm not waiting for long," he announced, muscles relaxing slightly but his quills stayed ridged.

Knuckles pointed at where Metal Sonic had by now pushed Tails rudely onto a chair and was tying him to it. "You don't have to. Metal Sonic is up to something; we just wait until he's busy."

Sonic nodded, apparently able to live with that. A trace of interest lay in his green eyes as he watched the robot. "What's he up to?"

Knuckles shrugged. "No idea…"

A stage lower, Metal Sonic had finished tying up his prisoner and stood before Tails, making a wide gesture towards the shining artificial gemstones that remotely reminded Knuckles of the crazed scientist that had once created Metal Sonic. "You should feel honored, fox unit. You are the only biological to watch my completion to ultimate power!"

"That's… great, really. Awesome!" Tails' double namesakes nervously twirled behind his back, straining against the bonds.

"Watch carefully. Perfection will take only a few minutes to form..." Metal Sonic made a sound remotely resembling a wicked laugh, walking away from Tails, towards a terminal next to the force field containing the gems. He turned back to Tails, eyes glowing a deep, hostile red, then he extended a hand and fit his claws into a part of the console taking it in like a plug. The robot froze in that position, but the wave that ran through the chaos field in the room told Knuckles even more precisely than the increasing shine the gemstones gave out what was happening. They were too late. Why had he told Sonic to stop? To save Tails' life, just to have something started that would probably end their all lives? Knuckles sadly shook his head to himself. _Why_ did he wait?

The seven fake Master Emeralds were beginning to glow even brighter and gradually an eighth source of blinding green light was added as an aura of chaos energy started to surround the charging Metal Sonic.

"He's using them to power up!", Sonic exclaimed, finally catching up as well. "Knuckles, we have to stop him!"

"We're too late for that," the echidna noticed darkly.

"But… What if he really powers himself up with all that energy? He's gonna –"

"He can't," Knuckles interrupted his anxious friend. "Think, Sonic! You've been super with the seven Chaos Emeralds. I've been super with the Master Emerald. ONE Master Emerald. More energy than that… nobody could take it."

"Well, in case you haven't noticed smart-ass, he's a freaking robot!" Sonic didn't look reassured at all.

"It doesn't have anything to do with that. There's a physical limit that has nothing to do with pain tolerances or the bigger durability of a robot. There's a point where there's so much chaos energy it burns you away, and it doesn't matter if you're made of living flesh and blood or metal and oil." Knuckles warily watched the fake gems and the shining robot. So far, Metal Sonic stood still. The charging process needed time… "I suppose he'll power up to a certain point and then let the energy stay at that level by constantly drawing it from those fake Emeralds." That was what he did whenever he'd use the Master Emerald for a transformation.

Sonic frowned, but something lit up in his green eyes. "You mean he'll have to return for recharging and plug himself in again?"

Knuckles shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Those fake Master Emeralds are unstable, too much energy in one place to put it simply. The field is less unstable since he started drawing power from it; all that energy needs an outlet and it has found one. Now it's like… when you have water flowing a certain way, all water that comes later will stick to that way, too. It's a little like that with the energy. It's found a way to flow and it's gonna keep doing it until…"

"Until what?", Sonic urged, impatiently flicking his pointy ears.

"Until either Metal Sonic or the Emeralds are destroyed."

"Ah." Sonic bit his lip. "Any ideas on how we'll destroy Metal Sonic? Can we break his control of the energy? Like you did on me, when I first came to your island?"

The guardian shook his head. "No. That –" He pointed down into the hall. "That is chaos. Nothing more, nothing less. Control requires a mind, a heart bonding with the power."

Sonic nodded. "Now is that good or bad?"

Knuckles shrugged, aware of the grim look on his face. "If you ask me, the sane thing would be to get Tails and then run away as fast and far as we can while we still can."

The hedgehog next to him suddenly grinned. "I've rarely ever been accused of doing sane things. What do we have to do?"

"You, take Tails and get out of here. I, destroy the Emeralds. Anything else doesn't matter. If they stay, they'll corrupt the whole system of chaos in our world. I can feel it, it's already beginning." Knuckles brushed one of his long dreadlock-spikes over his shoulder.

"No way. We started this together and we'll end this together." Sonic's green eyes were looking firmly into Knuckles' face now. "I suggest we free Tails first and ask him for ideas to cut Metal' energy supply. After all, I suppose Tails built those fake Emeralds, that machine Metal Sonic is using and he knows more about robots than either of us."

Knuckles stared back at Sonic. This wasn't what he'd planned. He'd wanted the others out of danger, although he'd never admit that aloud to anyone. He was the guardian, dealing with something as horrible as fake Master Emeralds was clearly his job, and his job alone. But hearing Sonic's words, the firm determined tone in them and looking into his decided eyes, Knuckles found he couldn't contradict, and in the very back of his mind it felt good to know he wouldn't have to do things alone. "… Okay."

Sonic grinned. "Let's rock and roll, then, shall we?"

Knuckles nodded, feeling a smirk tug on the corners of his mouth in spite of himself. "We try from two sides. I glide over there, you try from here."

Sonic nodded back, and bounded down. Knuckles watched for just a second before jumping clear off the ledge and gliding towards the other side of the big room. As he neared the fake Emeralds, he could feel the energy prickling on his skin, making his fur stand on end. This was almost too much…

The guardian let himself drop behind the shelter of a big kind of machine. There were several weird automatons all over the room and while Knuckles had no idea what they were good for, they offered good chances to hide, get closer unnoticed… and first of all get used to the sizzling Emerald heat everywhere.

* * *

Sonic's feet softly feathered his jump down to the floor of the huge round room. From the corner of his eyes he saw Knuckles glide past overhead and land behind a big machine for obscure purposes. He threw a wary look at Metal Sonic, but the robot was standing still. The charging was still not over.

Quickly the blue hedgehog crossed the room. Tails was looking at him from the chair he was tied on. "Sonic! But… how'd you get out of the Master Emerald? Metal Sonic didn't _really_ put you in there, right?"

Sonic smiled. "Yes he did. Knux got me out. He's somewhere over there." He gestured across the room. "We came to get you out… and solve the rest of this mess." Having reached Tails' side, Sonic began trying to loosen the bonds.

"I have to tell Knuckles how sorry I am! I didn't want to make fake Master Emeralds, not even one!" Tails' ears lay flat.

"Shh. I know you didn't and Knuckles knows it too. We didn't know about the fake Emeralds when we came here. We came here just to save you, bud." The first of the bonds fell to the floor, freeing Tails' left hand.

"Really? Knuckles came to save me?"

"Of course! You better believe it." Sonic chuckled, freeing also Tails' right hand and kneeling down to untie his feet. "Great to see you, little bro." He smiled up at the fox.

Tails was smiling too and it wiped some of the tension off his face and seemed to reduce the weight of the shadows under his eyes. "Great to see you, too! I was so worried about you!"

Sonic playfully frowned. "You? Were worried about me? Nah, I was worried about you!"

Tails gave a short laugh, massaging his sore wrists. "Alright." His blue eyes took in the hedgehog more accurately and worry returned to his face. He pointed at the bandage around his friend's shoulder. "Sonic, what happened to you?!"

"Metal Sonic happened." Sonic fumbled to untie Tails' feet. "Long story. Knuckles patched me up; it's really not too bad. I've survived worse. Really. Like almost drowning on the way here…"

"Drowning? You didn't swim here, did you? The base has at least a dozen tunnels to the shore!"

Sonic twisted a knot, trying to figure out in which direction to pull on it. This would be so much better if he had a realistic chance to just slice through these things with a spin without running the risk of taking Tails' limbs off... "We came through the same tunnel we used last time. Turned out a room decided to flood while I was still in it." He grimaced. "We got held up a little because of that. Sorry we're so late, bro."

"Nonono! I'm glad you're here."

"Same." Sonic smiled. "But looking at the mess we got ourselves in, I think we're all going to regret being here. Do you think you can cut off Metal Sonic's energy supply? We need to defeat him..."

Tails' blue eyes widened. "Sonic, you can't defeat him! Not like that! He's too powerful. And he wants to kill you! You just can't fight him like that!"

Finally the knots gave and Sonic stood in front of Tails. "I have to fight him, Tails. Knuckles says we have to destroy the Emeralds and to do that we have to defeat Metal Sonic. And I need your help. Cut off his energy supply for me. Think you can do that?"

Tails' bit his lip, but he nodded. "I'll try my best. I need to get over there and –"

The fox was cut off when a bolt of green shot across the room and grabbed him. Sonic whirled around. Just a few meters away, shining like a little green sun, stood Metal Sonic, but with the glow and aura only the shape and the deep red eyes really told Sonic who he was looking at.

The robot tilted his head, holding Tails by the back of his neck in the left one of his claws. "Well, well, if that isn't Sonic, my loathsome copy."

Sonic had to put in a lot of efforts to look casual. "Heya Metal. Long time no see!"

Metal balled his right claw into a fist and a visible wave of energy rippled out from it. "I thought I had locked you away forever!"

Sonic shrugged. "You know, I can't stand staying at the same place for long. I had a look around, chilled a bit and then went to see what's going on elsewhere. You found yourself a nice, uh, house here…"

"Enough of this! I can't stand your puny voice. I will make you shut up now…" He shook Tails harshly, but the fox didn't dare struggle much.

The hedgehog forced himself to look into the robot's glooming red eyes. "Do with me whatever you want, but let Tails go."

To his surprise, Metal let out a weird laugh. "Take him. He is no longer of use to me. The real Sonic doesn't need any sidekicks."

Metal Sonic was still shining like a tiny green sun when he released Tails and threw him over to Sonic. The blue hedgehog jumped just in time to catch his little brother before he could hit the floor and helped him up.

"You okay, little buddy?"

Tails' eyes were glassy, but he nodded. "I'm okay."

"And now," Metal Sonic boomed, "I am going to prove I'm your superior by destroying both Sonic the Hedgehog and his little sidekick… in one blow." The anyway almost blinding glow around the robot intensified at his middle as the chaos energy fed into his laser cannon.

Sonic held one hand around Tails' wrist, standing in front of the fox and warily watching the glowing robot. There would be just one chance to jump, just one chance to escape this beam of doom. And given the time Metal took charging it, it'd be a real blast…

But before the robot could launch it at Sonic and Tails, something else got his attention. Unnoticed by everyone else, Knuckles had snuck around the room and was now standing in front of the force field surrounding the seven Master Emerald copies, trying to break though the shield with an array of fiery punches.

Metal's red eyes fixed on the echidna. "You cannot pass through this shield, worm."

If Knuckles was scared of the supercharged Metal Sonic, he did a good job of showing nothing of it. "This is a chaos barrier. I will get through it sooner or later," he remarked, a fierce challenge in his tone.

Metal Sonic almost lazily waved a clawed hand. "You are annoying me," he snarled and turned around to face the echidna.

Sonic realized an instant too late what he was going to do. He pushed Tails behind the nearest large machine and braced himself to jump his robot counterpart from behind. He came too late.

The beam that shot out of Metal's chest laser was the same intense green as the glow from the fake Emeralds and seemed to take a slight zigzag path. Nonetheless, it was faster than anyone in the room. Faster than Sonic could possibly get to Metal Sonic to prevent it… and faster than Knuckles could move to get out of the way of it.

It seemed surreal to Sonic that he was the one who screamed when the shot hit home. Knuckles himself didn't utter a single sound as the beam smashed against his chest and sent him flying through half of the room until he collided with a wall. The echidna slid down against the wall and landed in a limp heap on the floor.

"Knux, no!" The second he'd been too slow to save his friend, Sonic stopped in mid-run, feeling as if he'd run into a wall. He stared at the unmoving body, at the glowing Emeralds, at Metal Sonic's shining form, but all just for a second. Then, suddenly, he wasn't so scared of him anymore. Suddenly he was too angry to be scared. "First Tails, now Knuckles... You're going to pay for everything you did," he muttered, green eyes fixed on Metal's spiked shape.

Metal Sonic seemed but amused. He'd turned back around, not dignifying the fallen echidna with another look. "Now to you again, my loathsome copy. Now there's just the two of us left."

Sonic's eyes narrowed, his quills standing sharp and ridged on his back. "Bring it on, Metal," he growled, jumping to home attack the robot.

It was a pathetic attack, fuelled by anger and desperation. With his chaos infused super speed, Metal Sonic sidestepped the attack with ease and Sonic crashed into a sort of table instead that splintered with a loud noise. Dazed and dizzy from the impact and his shoulder painfully protesting against the hit it had taken, the hedgehog struggled to pick himself up from the wreckage. He'd barely gotten on all fours when Metal was already standing over him, his red eyes glowing a deep red and the laser charging another shot of green energy. "Say farewell to your little life, _Sonic_."

Sonic had never heard so much hatred in the mere sound of his name as when Metal Sonic said it. If this sound and the glow of the laser were anything to go by, he was done for.


	26. Metal Madness

Holding his hand over his aching shoulder and still more lying under the splinters of the table than close to any position that would allow him to escape, Sonic could only stare up at Metal. There was something like triumph in the robot's eyes, something that, should he even survive this day, would surely haunt his nightmares for the next months. It felt weird to consider he could lose, so quickly, so easily, without an actual fight, after all those fights he'd _won_ against that robot.

"Hey, Metal Sonic!" Tails' sudden call came as a surprise to both real and robotic hedgehog. Metal Sonic turned his head, searching the fox. Trashing his namesakes as bushy rotor blades, Tails was hovering next to the strange machine aside of the Emerald containing field. "Didn't you say you'd destroy us together?! That's the only way to prove you're better than us," he shouted.

Metal Sonic actually seemed to consider this. "Come here, fox unit, so I can terminate both of you then."

Tails waved his arms. "Come and get me," he shouted.

Still half stuck under the wreckage, Sonic struggled to stop Metal when he started towards Tails. He wanted to shout for Tails to fly away as fast as he could, but something latched onto his ankle and the yell got caught in the hedgehog's throat as he was yanked out of the rubbish and pulled behind another big piece of bizarre machinery.

"Are you okay? Sonic!"

Sonic just stared at the red echidna kneeling next to him. "Knux? But I thought you were –"

"Playing possum," Knuckles interrupted, peeking around the corner of the machine.

"What?" Sonic didn't quite manage to get his gaping jaw closed again.

"I was playing possum," the guardian repeated, almost seeming amused, even if his face was definitely on the pale side right now. "You know, like in pretending I was dead? That's a very old strategy when you're screwed and it worked well enough, didn't it?"

Sonic shook his head, trying to catch up. "But he hit you full tilt with that massive beam of death!"

Knuckles flinched and nodded seriously. "It's Master Emerald energy. Well, at least it's something very close to it. It hurt a lot, but it can't really harm me, at least not fatally so, not in one blow. I have almost the same energy around me every day, Sonic. Luckily Metal didn't know that. I took a moment to recover and snuck up behind him. Someone has to save your spiky ass, right?"

Finally Sonic grinned. "Yeah, thanks. You're making a habit out of it lately. But now we have to save Tails."

"I guess Tails will be fine," Knuckles noticed. "Metal Sonic apparently doesn't want to risk shooting at this thing Tails is hiding behind. From the way it's glowing like that, I think it's what transfers the fake Emerald energy to his battery or whatever he runs on."

Sonic crawled to look out of their shelter along with the echidna. "Do you think Tails can do something about it?"

"I figured he could, after all he built that thing," Knuckles remarked neutrally, one hand absentmindedly brushing over his chest as he spoke. You couldn't see any actual, physical injury, and Sonic wondered if and how much it would still hurt if there wasn't any damage to see.

Shaking himself out of the thought, the hedgehog looked over to Tails and his machine again. "We have to distract Metal," he realized. If Tails was going to be able to do something to stop Metal, he would work better undisturbed.

Knuckles nodded. "Yes. Can you run?"

Sonic raised a brow at him. What kind of question was that? "You bet."

The echidna smirked. "Good. I run to the left, you run to right. Make noise and get his attention."

Sonic grinned. "I'm good at that."

Knuckles grimaced. "Don't be too good."

Sonic winced at the memory of how catching Metal's attention had gone so far. _Don't think about it now_. "Ready?"

"Ready." They exchanged another nod, then Sonic turned and bolted to the right, hopping out behind the machine, waving his arms and shouting.

It worked instantly. Metal Sonic's head whirled around from where he stood, probably trying to work out how to get a shot at Tails while avoiding the machine, and his glowing optics locked on the blue hedgehog bouncing up and down crazily.

"Hey, tin can! You think I'm done with you already? Wrong! Come and get your shiny butt kicked!" Sonic managed to grin in spite of the lethal stare he received out of the robot's eyes. Adrenaline was pumping rapidly through Sonic's body and it made it seem easy tempting his robotic counterpart to attack him. Sonic wasn't even scared.

When Metal Sonic fully turned to him and out of a standstill accelerated to rush across the room and get him, it briefly occurred to the hedgehog that he maybe should have been at least a little scared. Then all he saw was a bright green glow and Metal Sonic's powered up form slammed into him with the force of a meteor impact. At least, that was what it felt like to Sonic.

He didn't know if he'd been punched or kicked or merely rammed; all that registered in his brain was the pain of the blow and that he was suddenly flying backwards. Rainbow stars exploded before his eyes and he didn't know if Metal Sonic followed, or where he was if he didn't. Then Sonic smashed into a wall.

The hedgehog was only distantly aware of dropping down to the floor. His shoulder pounded and stung sharply, his entire front hurt and for a moment he was sure he'd cracked something. He didn't move, but he forced his eyes open again. Metal Sonic had turned away from him and was currently hovering in the middle of the room, not too far from where he'd hit Sonic. But for the moment he'd seemed to have lost interest in him and it gave the hedgehog a few precious seconds to recover.

Carefully Sonic rolled over into a somewhat relaxed and comfortable position, trying to catch his breath and figuring out what was hurt. After a few seconds he found to his relief that his bones seemed intact. He had sustained a couple very nasty bruises and they'd surely bother him the next days… if they all lived long enough to see the next few days.

The pain receding to a tolerable level, Sonic crawled to his feet, again scanning the room. Tails was ducked behind a big machine with a lot of manically blinking buttons and lights. He'd opened a cover at the side of the apparatus and was probably trying to manipulate the machine from there. Luckily he either sat out of Metal Sonic's sight or the robot didn't care about him at the moment.

Probably the latter, Sonic thought. Had he hovered silently in place until then, now Metal Sonic suddenly shot forwards, but not aiming at Sonic or Tails. He'd locked on Knuckles, who jumped up and down in front of a large coil of sorts. Sonic wanted to yell a warning to his friend, but a second before Metal Sonic reached him, the red echidna flung himself full length to the floor, what for some reason seemed to surprise Metal Sonic, sliding past under the flying robot, then scrambling back to his feet hurriedly and diving for cover behind another random machine.

Metal Sonic stopped in mid-air and Sonic realized that if Knuckles' plan had been letting the robot smash the coil thing, it had totally not worked out. Instead, it had brought Knuckles into Metal's reach and a green chaos laser shot just barely missed his feet as the echidna hurried out of the way. He wasn't moving all too steadily, his dash to the side more like a dizzy scramble, and even if they didn't kill him, the chaos-y laser shots had proven to immobilize him, and if he was down, Metal Sonic wouldn't need the laser to kill Knuckles.

"Hey, Metal! I'm still here!", Sonic bellowed. He was right thinking his call would get Metal Sonic's immediate attention. After all, it was Sonic he hated more than anything, it was Sonic who was defined in his programming as Enemy Number One. That made Sonic his primary target and the hedgehog was sure he'd give up on any other objectives if it meant he could get him instead. As long as Sonic was a target, his friends were somewhat safe, and Sonic was determined to make sure they were safe as long as he could.

"You still want to fight me, pathetic biological hedgehog copy?" Metal Sonic turned around to him, with a metallic snarl that was maybe supposed to be a laugh. "Surrender yourself, admit that I am the superior Sonic… and I will make your death quick and easy…"

Sonic shook his head. "No thanks. I don't really plan to die anytime soon, and certainly I won't die by a fake hedgehog like you."

That he'd said the right thing immediately became clear to Sonic as Metal's eyes turned a deeper and brighter red that pulsed threateningly at him. "I am going to destroy you, _Sonic_! And I will make sure you _suffer_."

A brief flicker in the robot eyes told Sonic he'd attack. He didn't see anything but a blur of glowing green rush towards him, but this time reflex had already reacted and Sonic dived aside, rolled over the floor, came up running. The yell of anger behind told him Metal Sonic had already realized he'd missed, again, and instinctively Sonic took on a zigzag course through the room, randomly changing directions to make it harder to hit him. He looked over his shoulder as he ran, spotting Metal a few meters to the left behind him – and the robot suddenly disappeared.

Sonic's head whirled around, trying to see where he'd gone, and out of nowhere a fist slammed into his side, sending him flying across the room again. Instinctively he curled up even before he hit the floor and ended up rolling over it until he had shred his momentum, then managed to get up on all fours.

He quickly looked across the room to locate the robot, but first he didn't see him and when he suddenly appeared before him Sonic had no idea where he'd come from and how. He only knew that he received a hard kick in the side and crashed into a steel pillar. Gasping sharply and clutching his side, he stared up at Metal Sonic, suspended weightlessly in the air before him. He wanted to get up and run, but for the moment he could only try to catch his breath and give his body a chance to deal with the pain. Stall for time.

"I didn't know you could turn invisible," he pressed out through his teeth, warily watching the glowing robot.

Metal Sonic waved his arms, smugly raising them over his head. "I can do anything! With the powers of chaos, I can become invisible, invincible… I can do whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want! I am perfect!"

"Yeah, sure…", Sonic mumbled quietly to himself. He refused to believe that. Nothing was perfect. And nothing and nobody was truly invincible. "I tell you, I'll find a way to take you apart like the tin can you are. Just you wait…"

The robot cocked his head. "Your lack of understanding for your situation is pathetic. You cannot beat me, you cannot win, you cannot save yourself or your tiny friends. I will end it all, and I will end _you_."

"Can't wait to see you try…" While Metal Sonic spoke, Sonic had pushed his hands under himself and now he shot upright from where he'd knelt on the ground, curling up mid-jump and launching himself at the robot spines first.

There just had to be a way to beat him…

But apparently this one he'd chosen wasn't it. Smashing into Metal Sonic was like smashing into concrete. The second Sonic's quills made contact with his armor, the chaos energy inside and around the robot sizzled against Sonic's skin and he felt like he'd grabbed a life wire. The scream that came up with the feeling was cut off in a choked gasp and Metal swatted him away with a single blow of his hand. Like one chases off a fly.

Twitching with the aftereffect of the hurtful energy and out of breath, Sonic banged into the force field around the seven fake Master Emeralds and it wasn't a single bit better than hitting the wall.

Metal Sonic turned around to him. "You shouldn't have done that, hedgehog. Prepare to die." The laser pole was glowing again and even if it had not killed Knuckles Sonic wasn't sure about himself. He fought to get up again, cursed, looked at Metal Sonic again only to find the laser fire.

The fear of getting toasted helped a little, in so far that he managed to stand and tumble aside. It wouldn't be enough to escape the beam though and Sonic braced himself for what would surely hurt a lot. But it never hit.

Disbelievingly the hedgehog watched in adrenaline fuelled slow motion how from the right a red echidna jumped out from behind a machine, hands held out flat before him and something green flashed up in thin air, catching the laser beam and directing it up harmlessly towards the ceiling. For a second something like triumph was on Knuckles' face, then the green half sphere he'd drawn up bulged backwards and dissipated with a bang, the force of something akin to a shockwave that followed blowing both Knuckles and Sonic backwards and rolling over the floor.

Metal Sonic was staring up at the burn mark his laser had left on the ceiling, apparently struggling to understand what had happened, and it gave Sonic and Knuckles some important seconds to get back up.

Holding his hand pressed against his side, Sonic hurried to follow a slightly limping, tumbling Knuckles to find cover behind a machine block that looked relevant enough to raise hopes Metal Sonic wouldn't directly shoot at it.

"What was _that_?!", Sonic asked although he thought he might know, peering out from behind the machine to check what the robot would do.

"Chaos barrier. A shield, of sorts," Knuckles gasped, rubbing his forehead. "Or, at least that's what I tried with it. I can get one up using the Master Emerald, even on a bigger distance, but I can't reach it from here. Too much energy around, too much _weird_ energy and disturbances and… _stuff_." He grimaced. "I had to use the energy from these _things_ and it's unstable as heck."

Sonic pulled a face. "I've seen that… But you know, I think your unstable barrier thingy saved my tail. Thanks."

Knuckles smiled weakly. "Welcome. But we have to find a better way. We can't even attack him without getting hurt. If we keep up like that, we're gonna be dead before we know it."

"Tell me something new." Sonic groaned. "There's just gotta be something we can do to beat him! We can't just dodge all the time!"

"Ask Tails. He knows more about robots than anyone of us. I think he's trying to cut off his energy supply." Knuckles nodded his head at where Tails had by now crawled halfway into the big machine next to the force field. "See if he has any ideas, I'll try to distract that crazy robot."

Sonic shook his head. "No. It's me who he's after and –"

"– and you are on a great way to get seriously injured. You already started in not great shape." Knuckles' amethyst eyes were serious, gaze catching pointedly on all the cuts and bruises.

"But –"

"Sonic. Go ask Tails for ideas. That way, you get a short break. And besides…" A crooked grin appeared on the echidna's face. "I don't understand what Tails says anyway."

Sonic chuckled. "Heh. Neither do I."

Knuckles shrugged. "I still think you got better chances to get anything out of what he says than I do."

Sonic looked at him seriously. Contrary to his words, Knuckles looked off, shaken, out of it in a way, and it wasn't the kind of condition you needed to be in to take on a superpowered robot manic. Then again, Knuckles was right, too, both of them were no longer anything like unscathed. "Okay." He'd just have to be quick, Knuckles could probably dodge Metal a couple times more, and even if he didn't, the guardian could take a serious punch. He should probably trust it to Knuckles that he wouldn't get himself killed in a minute or two. "Don't get yourself toasted."

"I'll try my best." The echidna flinched. "Now _move_."

Sonic quickly made sure Metal Sonic was still puzzledly inspecting the ceiling – things like that took a long time, maybe, hopefully, all that chaos energy was frying his processors or whatever a robot had for a brain - then darted across the room and squeezed himself into the tight space behind the energy transferring machine next to Tails. He carefully tapped his shoulder.

"Hey buddy."

The little fox span around. "Sonic! Are you okay?!"

Sonic grimaced. "I'll survive. Tell me you're making progress."

Tails sighed. "I wish I could! I've done everything I could think of, but I can't shut down the energy transfer. I think it became independent and works no matter what I do. The energy is there and it's unstable and too much in one place and it has to go somewhere… and it found it can go to Metal Sonic. I can't stop it anymore, I'm sorry, Sonic…"

"Okay, okay, take it easy, bro." Sonic patted Tails' shoulder, chewing his lip. If they couldn't cut off Metal Sonic's energy supply, he didn't know how they could stop the overpowered robot.

 _Overpowered_ …

 _Overload_. He'd seen that, on the mysterious walls in the Master Emerald. The bright glow of these fake gems, the machinery in this room, and flashing warning letters across computer screens. Overload.

"That's it," Sonic mumbled. "Tails, do you think you can make _more_ energy going from the fake Emeralds to Metal Sonic's power core?"

"More?" Tails stared at him as if he thought he was totally nuts now.

Sonic nodded sharply. "I was just wondering… Is it possible to overcharge him? I've seen Eggman creations overcharge with too much energy and they usually break or explode or something when that happens."

"That's… I don't know… It seems really… counterintuitive, but maybe… Maybe it could work." Tails suddenly smiled. "You're a clever hedgehog, Sonic, don't let anyone tell you you aren't."

Sonic grinned. "Must be your good influence."

Tails was still smiling and with all the terror he'd been through the past week in mind Sonic was incredibly glad to see his little brother smile. "I'm gonna try it now, Sonic. But before he really overcharges and gets damaged by that, if it even works, after all, this is chaos energy, not just electricity or something… Even if it works, Sonic, I think he's gonna get stronger first."

Sonic nodded. _Figures_ … "I get it. Listen, you start overcharging him right away. I'll get back out there and help Knuckles distract him. We'll try our best keeping him away from you so you can do your thing, alright?"

"Okay. Be careful, Sonic. I don't want to lose you again." Tails' blue eyes bore painfully into Sonic's heart.

"You won't lose me, Tails. Not ever. I promise. And now we'll toast robot butt, okay?"

Tails nodded, a shy but decisive smile growing on his face again. "Okay!"

Sonic gave him a smile and slipped back outside. He oriented himself with a quick look around, tracking down Metal Sonic and Knuckles just in time to witness the echidna being barely missed by another blow. He had tripped over the broken remains of some sort of machine and now struggled to get back up in time to dodge Metal Sonic's next attack, and it didn't look like he had any chance to escape the hit in time.

Without a thought Sonic was running. He shot past Metal Sonic floating in place and preparing his next blow, bounded over a couple pieces of debris and landed at Knuckles' side. He didn't waste the time to stop, he just reached down a hand towards the echidna and snatched hold of his arm. The next instant Sonic was accelerating again, halfway around the force field, then he stopped and let Knuckles dizzily regain his feet.

"The reinforcements are back." He grinned.

Knuckles just nodded, struggling to catch his breath and balance, but spare a few new cuts and bruises and utterly disheveled spines he didn't look that much worse than he did a minute ago. "How's Tails?"

"Fine. Cutting off Metal's power doesn't work, he's now trying to overload him," Sonic summarized quickly. "How are you holding up?"

Knuckles shrugged. "Not too bad I guess. Maybe I can call it good luck a certain someone gave me so much free training at dodging attacks by someone insanely faster than me."

Sonic chuckled a little at that. "You can thank me later."

The red echidna shot him a stern look and ignored the comment. "Do we have a plan?"

"None different than before. We distract Metal as good as we can and don't get killed in the progress."

Knuckles frowned. "Ah yeah. Did I mention my dislike for your plans?"

Sonic scratched behind his ear. "Wasn't that your plan?"

The guardian blinked. "Uh… I… don't remember?" The frown was still there, cut deeply into his brow like an injury of its own.

Sonic shrugged. "Whatever." It wasn't important. "Let's split up and keep Metal busy."

Knuckles nodded, and the two turned in opposite directions again.

Sonic easily managed to get Metal Sonic's attention, the robot even seemed somewhat glad Sonic was back on the picture and not yet terminated, as the robot put it. Sonic himself was glad he wasn't yet terminated as well, and in order to keep it that way he tried to keep a healthy distance to Metal Sonic now. Provoke him, dodge, run for cover, let Knuckles take over.

They managed to go like that for a couple of minutes and during the short periods Sonic got to take a break because Metal Sonic was chasing after Knuckles the hedgehog noticed the anyway bright green glow surrounding the robot getting ever brighter and brighter. He was becoming faster too, and Sonic and Knuckles were having more and more trouble dodging his attacks. Not that they'd been all too successful at that earlier.

In spite of this, Metal Sonic, apparently having tired of chasing his adversaries directly, had taken to standing close to the center of the room, back to the forcefield and fake Emeralds, and was using his laser and its green blast of chaos power to either shoot at Sonic and Knuckles or to blow up parts of the things that stood around the room.

Sonic noticed there were a few of the machines he avoided, probably something important, and resorted to using the spots behind them whenever he needed a quick cover.

He needed cover often.

Dodging under another beam of green zigzag light and barely avoiding the loss of a quill or two, the hedgehog skidded behind a towering machine that resembled a weird cross between fridge and seasonal lighting display with its countless blinking lights. From behind it, he took a careful look at Metal Sonic, then he went on to search for Knuckles.

He spotted the echidna crouched behind the large coil, one hand braced against it, the other rubbing his forehead. Not for the first time Sonic wondered if the chaos laser hit had done as little damage indeed as Knuckles had claimed, but he'd seemed out of sorts even before that. Sonic too could feel the random bursts of energy from the fake Emeralds bristle against his fur, raising his spines and making it hard to concentrate, but Knuckles seemed to do worse than that.

A sudden bang pulled Sonic's attention back to Metal Sonic, who was now shooting at a thing between his and Knuckles' position. The machine had obviously had enough already; flames were darting out of its top, the shockwave of a second explosion helped the fire jump over to the neighbouring automatons and proceeded rapidly from there in a flashing blaze.

"Knuckles, look out! Dammit..."

Sonic was running already by the time he ground out the last part, the wind pulling the curse from his lips unheard. He bounded over the wreckage of a fallen device, tucked into a spin to pass under the flickering flames, came up running.

Before him, the last machine in the block blew up almost as soon as the fire reached it, parts of its hull shot outwards in a flurry of metal and flame. Sonic ducked his head deeper into his wind, turning his face away from the blast, ran faster, curled up again. A stream of hot air and flying metal pieces struck the tips of his spines, but the speed and momentum were enough to fling them away again.

He jumped out of the spin, regained his feet just in time to avoid crashing right into a startled looking Knuckles. He stepped around him instead, catching his arm around his friends' shoulders and tearing him along, stumbling for a few more fast steps, then falling.

Sonic twisted into the fall on instinct, pulled Knuckles along. Inertia carried them on even as the blue hedgehog dropped onto his back, stiffened spines grating along the metal floor with an ear-piercing screech. Knuckles fell on top of him a heartbeat later. Sonic gasped at the weight, struggled to pull in a proper breath past it, but the additional drag of the rather heavy echidna was slowing him down, too.

Knuckles had finally caught up with what was happening, he was scrambling off Sonic even as they were still sliding along the floor with the excess speed. The shift of weight tipped Sonic over onto his side too, Knuckles reached out for the edge of a big, cubic machine as it rushed past, and because Sonic was still holding on to him he was pulled along and to a sudden stop behind the thing.

He gasped in a few quick breaths and pulled himself upright, shaking his flattened quills into a semblance of normal position as he went, threw a look back at the fire and smoke behind, then turned back to Knuckles. "Not quite the right time for a nap, don't you think?" He tried a grin along with it to make it sound like more of a joke than it was.

Knuckles nodded. He looked startled and dazed, but a fair amount of familiar anger and annoyance was there, too.

For once it was not directed at Sonic, though. "I hate that robot," the echidna spat out, crawling back to his feet with the machine in his back. "And those Emerald - _things_!"

"I'm with you there."

Knuckles threw a look of his own back at the explosion debris and huffed out a quick "Phew". He shook his head. "Didn't see that one coming..."

"Yeah…" To be fair, there were a lot of things today Sonic had not seen coming, either. "Be careful." He nodded at Knuckles, waited just the second until it was returned, then he darted away again to catch the mad robot's attention and divert it from his friends.

A few more minutes passed with running and jumping and dodging barely in time when Metal Sonic went back to chasing after him and Knuckles, and the blue hedgehog was beginning to gradually worry they wouldn't be able to keep this up for much longer.

However, the next time Sonic had the chance to observe for a short moment, he spotted sparks playing on Metal Sonic's joints. It was working. Sonic slipped out of his cover and called out for the robot just in time to distract him from the fact Knuckles wouldn't have been anywhere near fast enough to run from him this time.

With the unwavering hatred for Sonic burning in his red eyes, the robot charged at the hedgehog. Sonic stood, ready to jump, and waited for the exact right moment. He'd realized that while Metal Sonic's movements got faster as Tails overcharged his power core, his reactions were beginning to get slower. Maybe his processors were taking damage already?

The second Metal Sonic was just a meter away, Sonic ducked and jumped aside. The overpowered robot didn't manage to stop quickly enough this time. He slammed full speed into the force field and fell to the ground next to the energy transferring machine. "What is happening … to… me…?!", the robot yelled.

Several things happened at the same time then. Tails screamed out and darted away, seeking shelter with Knuckles on the other side of the room. The big machine let out a screeching noise, seemed to glow out of itself for just a second, then the blinking lights went out and a flame shot out of the control panel. The force field flickered once, twice, thrice before collapsing with a bang and flash of white light. Metal Sonic was glowing so brightly green now that it washed out to white and Sonic couldn't look at him without being blinded. Hundreds of small lightening bolts sparked and darted all over the robot's body and jumped over to the burning machine and the no longer concealed fake Emeralds. For several seconds the air sizzled and crackled loudly with energy discharges, then with a loud cracking noise Metal Sonic's energy shot back at the nearest fake Emerald and the robot lay still.

Sonic stood, still braced and ready to jump, and stared at the dead form of his robotic nemesis. The eyes were out and black, the glow gone to leave just a broken and dented blue hull behind. Without the force field, the fake Master Emeralds seemed to shine an even brighter light, bathing the room in an unreal shine, the energy hot and prickling on his skin. Suddenly it was quiet aside of the cracks of the fire dancing on the broken machines.

For just a moment the situation seemed surreal to the blue hedgehog and he couldn't quite wrap his mind around having won. It wasn't like they normally won, not quite. It hadn't even been a fight like they were used to have, like _he_ was used to have.

But then a grin slipped over Sonic's sweaty face. It didn't matter, right? Victory was victory. He slowly, still warily, walked over to the dead shape of Metal Sonic and knocked the tip of his left shoe against the robot's torso. A dull noise and then silence. Metal was nothing much more than a pile of junk. "And this is why the real Sonic has always needed his sidekicks." Sonic turned around. Tails had come back out. He still looked a little winded, but his eyes were shining.

Even Knuckles was smiling, but the echidna's positivity was short-lived. "Sonic, something's wrong!"

The hedgehog crossed the room to join his friends. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure, it's the energy…"

"What about it?" Tails looked worried again now, too, automatically scanning the screens on the panels, well, those that were not charred and smoking. "Overload!" still flickered across them in bright, warning neon letters.

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable."_

Sonic jumped at the sudden computer voice from all around. "What was that?!"

"The base's computer system," Tails explained. "It supervises all systems and machines in the base. To properly observe the fake Master Emeralds, I connected the system to the computers."

"Great. I meant, what does it mean by 'failure inevitable', Tails?"

"They're unstable," Knuckles answered instead, nodding at the artificial gems, eyes wide and eerily reflecting the green glow. "They're gonna explode. With Metal Sonic using their energy, there was somewhat of an outlet. Now, the energy has nowhere to go."

Tails nodded. "It's just building and building until it's too much and the crystal form can't stay intact anymore." He shook his head, desperately looking at Knuckles. "I'm so sorry, Knuckles! I would have never wanted to make a fake Master Emerald, let alone seven of them! You have to believe me! I knew it was bad, but I couldn't refuse. Metal Sonic would have –"

"I know, kid, I know." Knuckles sadly shook his head. "I'm not blaming you. I know you would never do something like that. It's not your fault."

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable."_

"Guys? It's really nice you're not blaming each other for the big crap we're stuck in, but can we please think of a way to get out of it?" Sonic nervously tapped a foot.

Tails' voice carried a hysteric pitch in it as he answered. "I don't know anything we could do, Sonic! I've really been thinking about it hard, but I just have no idea what we can do to stop it!"

"There is nothing we can do to stop it," Knuckles said darkly. "I knew it the second I saw those things." He glared at the big green stones as if that would do anything. "They're unstable and they get more unstable the longer they exist. They aren't actually Master Emeralds, but they aren't anything else either. They can't exist in a world that's based on having seven Chaos Emeralds and one Master Emeralds as the core objects of its chaos system. If they keep existing, these things will unbalance and ultimately destroy the universe."

Tails' ears lay flat on his head. "I really, really didn't want anything like that to happen…"

"We know, Tails, we know. It's okay." Sonic put an arm around him and looked back at Knuckles. "What do you think we should do?"

"Nothing. When I saw them I knew I had to destroy them to save the real Master Emerald, the Chaos Emeralds, the world. Now I don't need to worry about how to destroy them, they're on and about to destroy themselves." Knuckles shook his head, his long dreads swinging around drooping shoulders and everything about him looked helpless. "All we can do is run for it and hope we're fast enough to make it out alive before they blow up the whole place."

Sonic sucked in a breath sharply. "Okay. Then we better run and hope we find a way out of here quickly."

Tails shook his head. "I don't think that's a problem. There are hardly any robots left, we, well, you, really, destroyed most of them when we got back the Master Emerald that first time from here, and the few that remain won't know what's happening. I was planning to try to escape again today and disabled the security feeds, cameras and robots after Metal Sonic caught me in my first attempt." He pointed to the far end of the room. "I know how Metal Sonic brought me in here. The way ends at a rocky coast and I think it's shorter from here than the way we used to come in through."

"Good. Lead the way then. The path we took to get here is impassable anyway 'cause parts of it got flooded…." Knuckles grimaced.

"Sonic told me, but… What happened?!"

"Later, Tails." Sonic was sure his facial expression almost matched Knuckles', and that wasn't the case often.

"We have to hurry." Knuckles pointed unmistakably at the fake Master Emeralds. "These things are already making my head spin. We gotta move it."

Sonic nodded. "Right. Tails?"

The young fox pointed. "This way."

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable."_

"We heard you," Sonic grumbled, and the three friends started to run.


	27. Master Of Chaos

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable."_

Sonic was beginning to hate the computer voice, beginning to hate the softness of it, this flat lack of emotion, this mocking lack of urgency. Just slightly in front of his friends, the blue hedgehog was running along the corridor, green walls rushing past, three pairs of feet leaving rapid, metallic thuds that echoed on the blank walls.

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level."_

"This way to the right," Tails shouted. "That must be the way to the exit!"

Sonic's eyes darted through the room opening before them. Like many other rooms of the base, it was round and very high. A few of the silvery blue balls floated through it and behind large windows the deep blue of the ocean shone through. The idea to be underwater had never been comfortable to Sonic, but now, knowing the fake Master Emeralds were about to blow the whole place up, it seemed like his worst nightmare. Giant explosions were one thing. Giant explosions bursting the windows and flooding this whole place were something else entirely.

Tails was right; to the right of them another corridor began. Sonic ran towards it, charged past the threshold of the room and –

Screamed out in pain when colliding with a net of red-hot energy bolts.

"Sonic!" Tails' soles screeched as he stopped next to the hedgehog.

"You okay!?" Knuckles stopped his running simply by sliding into the wall next to the door.

Sonic gasped, looking himself down. A thin, red line was running over the tan skin of his chest, a line of burned, blackened fur over his hips and below the knees, and given the same hot pain coming from it, he bore another trace of the lasers on his brow. The hedgehog crawled back to his feet. "I… I'm good," he managed.

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level."_

"We can't get through this fence," Tails noticed unnecessarily.

"Make that _fences_ ," Knuckles corrected acidly, pointing past Sonic.

The hedgehog turned his head, finally really looking through the net of lasers. The corridor was like the others, green walls and pale, bluish lighting, curving a little as it sloped slightly upwards. Their way out? Probably. But unfortunately the echidna was right. The fences continued as far as they could see, tight nets of red energy. Impassable barriers, every five or six meters another one.

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level."_

"There's gotta be some way to get through!" Sonic span round, ignoring the sting of the burns. Come on… Something to shut down these lasers… They'd gotten so far…

"There's a switch!" Again it was Tails noticing it first. It sat at the other side of the room, a small white ball on the floor.

Sonic immediately ran over to it, stopping next to it and kicking against the ball. He turned over his shoulder and smiled. The fences were down. "Alright, we gotta hurry!"

The others nodded. Sonic was already running again, blazed past his waiting friends -

And almost rushed a second time into the laser fence. Only Knuckles gripping his arm as he raced past and jerking hard saved the hedgehog from adding another bunch of burns to the already existing ones. "What the –?"

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level."_

For a second or two, Sonic just stupidly stared at the fences. "But… I shut them down!"

Tails' double namesakes nervously span behind his back. "Try again?"

Knuckles let go of Sonic's arm and stood next to the switch, activating it with his foot. The ball lit up, and the lasers went out. "Okay, it works!"

Sonic nodded. "Great, let's juice!"

Knuckles nodded back and ran towards him, but stopped after just two or three steps. He blinked, staring at the again engaged fences, at the again deactivated switch. "What's wrong? Why doesn't this work?"

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable."_

"There must be something wrong with the contact. It doesn't stay active unless someone touches it," Tails noticed, then clasped a hand to his mouth.

Sonic stared at the fox. Tails was right. "Alright. Knux, Tails, get going."

Tails just stared, and Knuckles slowly shook his head, walking all the way back to the switch. "No. You get going. I'll stay."

"Knuckles! We can't leave you behind!" Tails' blue eyes were wide with shock and disbelief.

"Knux, I won't –"

"Sonic," the red echidna interrupted. " _Go_ , in Chaos' name. You're the only one of us running fast enough to make it out in time. And you know damn well what'll happen once the fake Emeralds blow up. I swim better than you."

Sonic blinked, his ears flattening. "Knux, I –"

"We don't go without you!", Tails insisted.

The guardian gave another shake of his head, eyes locked right to Sonic's. "Promise me you'll get Tails out of here."

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level."_

Sonic blinked again, faster this time, stared into Knuckles' eyes, and swallowed. After the last few days, he could hear in Knuckles' voice what his words didn't say, that gnawing sense of guilt for having not seen through the whole affair sooner, for not having come to Tails' rescue earlier, before it was too late to stop.

The hedgehog also knew that someone had to stay behind, and he was quite sure he wouldn't be able to talk Knuckles out of his decision, even if he'd had the time to try.

He shot a brief look at Tails – get him out of here – looked back at Knuckles, forced himself to nod. "I… I promise."

"Sonic, what -?" Tails' twin tails hung limply behind him.

"Come on, Tails, we gotta hurry."

"But –" The big cerulean eyes looked up at Sonic and the hedgehog had to swallow again. This wouldn't, couldn't be easy, not on any one of them.

"I'm sorry, Tails." Before the fox had a chance to react, Sonic got a good grip around his waist and picked him up, under his arm like a large package. A package that started to struggle in earnest with all arms, legs and tails after just the second he needed to realize what the hedgehog was doing.

"Sonic, no!"

Sonic could only shake his head. He looked at Knuckles and sighed. "Good luck," he got out, voice shaking.

Knuckles nodded, giving him a little smile, and Sonic had no idea where he'd conjured that one up. "Just _go_."

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level."_

Sonic nodded back, tried a smile himself and knew he failed at it when he turned around. He heard the small clicking sound when Knuckles stepped on the switch, but didn't bring himself to turn around again when before him the fences went down, and stayed down. He knew if he'd turn around, he wouldn't run. But he had to. He took a deep breath, shifted the still wildly kicking and winding, screaming and shouting Tails just slightly so he wouldn't drop him, and ran into the now open corridor before him.

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable. "_

The metal floor made loud clanking sounds under his quick footsteps until the rush of air was enough to drown it out. The green walls raced past him, but Sonic barely saw them. Something that wasn't really the pressure of wind was blurring his sight. The hedgehog blinked, trying to push through it. He had to get them out of here.

He'd promised.

* * *

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable."_

In certain situations a few seconds can mean a lifetime. Slowly creeping past, one heartbeat after the other. Far too slow.

Knuckles the Echidna felt just that as he stood with his foot on the lighted switch, counting the seconds down. How long would Sonic need to get out? Ten, twenty seconds? How long until he'd made it past the shut-off area? How long even had this base to live?

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. "_

Knuckles wouldn't have needed the computer voice to tell. These were Master Emeralds. Copies, sure. Imperfect fakes, but something similar to Master Emerald energy nonetheless. Just that sort of energy that ran through Knuckles' body, through his mind, his life, like his very blood.

And it was rising.

Unstable.

Chaos.

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable."_

By now decided he'd given Sonic more than enough time to escape safely, Knuckles moved away from the switch, running back a part of the way they'd come. Closer to the center.

Closer to the energy.

It flared, the radiation washing like waves through the entire base around him, echoing off the walls and ceiling, vibrating in the floor beneath his soles. Unlike the Master Emerald at home on the island, the _real_ Master Emerald, there wasn't much serenity in this field. No balance, no control. This was its flaw. It was chaos, made with failure to understood the essence of control, the meaning of balance in chaos. Fake a Chaos Emerald? Dangerous, risky, but fine. Fake a Master Emerald? A different thing. Knuckles knew it had failed. He could feel it with every single nerve in his body.

" _Critical energy level. Danger. Critical energy level. Failure inevitable. Repeat. Failure inevitable. "_

He just hoped it wouldn't have failed too much. It was there, wasn't it? Messed up, chaotic, out of balance, yes, but it was there. Too much of it. Too much in this one place.

All this energy needed to go somewhere, somewhere safe so that it wouldn't ignite or blow apart the planet.

He didn't know if he stood a chance, didn't know if he'd be enough of an outlet, enough to restrict the blow that was certainly going to happen, enough to keep it to just the base. He also wasn't completely sure if he would survive the attempt, but he was the Guardian, attuned to the chaos energy in a way no-one else was quite like this. He didn't burn in the Master's mighty field, in its own way so much stronger than these out of balance powers that hindered one another more than they multiplied.

No, if _something_ needed to burn in this unchecked chaos fire, he'd rather it be him than Mobius' atmosphere.

He briefly wondered if his friends had made it out safely by now. Would they think he was giving his life for theirs? It wasn't the truth. It wasn't a lie either.

It, too, was chaos.

Knuckles stopped just where he was, in the middle of some blank room, in front of another window showing the ocean, blue, dark, quiet, peaceful, like it didn't know that all hell was about to break loose here very soon.

Then he tore himself loose, closed his eyes, turning his palms outwards as he stood, feeling the random surges of energy around him. There were seconds left at worst, a minute at best. Knuckles slowly inhaled, listened to the beat of his heart and to the hum of the Emerald energy and focused his entire mind into his thoughts.

_The servers… are the seven Chaos. Chaos is power… enriched by the heart. The Controller is the one… to unify the Chaos…_

What was bound to happen was not quite an explosion for real. Not fire and heat, not smoke and dust. It was a chaos blast, but one of a size that had nothing in common with the tiny, explosive discharge of energy a Chaos Controller like Shadow could let loose as an attack in a fight. In such a blast, there was still a measure of control, a plan and a purpose.

This here… this held no control, no sense. For a few long moments, just before it happened, the air around Knuckles sizzled, sparks crackling against the tips of his spines. There was a thrum, a deep, low vibration that resonated through his entire body, and in his mind he could hear the fragile balance shift and _tip_ , slipping unstoppably towards the point of no return, towards the point where it just could not hold.

Instinct was screaming at him to run. He fought it down. Another part of him, a sense that ran so deep it was instinct in its own right, clamoured for him to reach out and draw on the Master's energy, to extend its balance and control and somehow reign in this blistering chaos.

But he could not reach it, had not been able to do so even before, not here, not amidst this madness, all senses overwhelmed by the roaring mad energy around. Too bright, too hot, too unsteady.

He reached out for what was there instead, against all instincts and common sense opened his mind up to take it in, fumbling for a hold on the ever shifting bursts, and when he finally could snatch hold of it, he drew it in and hung on for all it was worth.

It was nothing like the familiarity of the Master Emerald's energy. Nothing like a Chaos Emerald, either. But it sensed the shift of balance, sensed the outlet, the relief of pressure, and it rushed in for it like water down into a valley, pulled more by nature's innate, eternal seeking of balance than by any of his conscious doing, so fast and so powerful he thought he was drowning in the swirling tide of it.

Deep inside, something _snapped_ , ripped apart under the onslaught, sending sharp pain to pierce through his mind, leaving behind what felt like a gash more ragged and agonizing than he'd ever received in body. For a fearful moment the guardian felt like he was losing himself in this mess, washed out until nothing but chaos itself remained.

He fought back, struggled against the flood of it. He couldn't have stopped it from flowing in now had he meant to try. He didn't mean to try. He had started it, and he would end it. But as it was, he could only grit his teeth, trying to cling to mind and sanity and some measure of stability and control, while the raging chaos fire burned in his veins.

Gravity stopped to exist. Breathing stopped to be a necessity. The air around him filled with chaos flames, bright and hard emerald light, randomly flickering, green, red, blue, white in between, back to the green of these horrid fake Master Emeralds.

The energy was still building, and over the scorching heat eating away his nerve endings, he could feel the final crack, and for the blink of an eye it was as if the roaring in his ears would fall suddenly and utterly quiet.

 _Focus_. He could not afford to fail now.

A bang.

A flare of white hot light.

An eruption of chaos all around him.

The base exploded.


	28. Tremors

The door at the end of the long corridor opened automatically when Sonic neared it, sliding open just in time for the speedy hedgehog to slip through the opening gap. He would have been way too fast to stop if it hadn't.

Sonic didn't waste any time looking back as the metal floor of the base was replaced with the grass of some sort of meadow with randomly distributed chunks of rock on it. They continued further inland, and at the horizon Sonic spotted the electric lines following a railway track up to a building.

He tore his eyes away from the faraway train station. He still needed distance. The hedgehog raced straight up a small hill and just when he was almost at the top of it he dared a look over his shoulder.

It was right in time to see the small part of the building that wasn't underground, the part they'd just emerged from, being eaten up by a green fireball. A second later, the ocean behind what had been an entrance to Aquatic Base seemed to get a dent where the water rushed into the no longer sealed rooms. Another heartbeat later a second fireball, but this time glowing in so bright light it seemed more white than green, shot up from the middle of this 'dent' in the water.

Sonic had the foresight to leap behind the next group of rocks and throw himself to the floor, making sure to cover Tails with his body. His quills ridged instinctively, sharp blades pointing outwards, but they provided little protection from the pressure of the shockwave that rolled over them almost as soon as Sonic was fully down. A deep, rolling sound like thunder followed directly behind it and the tremors lingered on for another few moments.

And then it was suddenly… _silent_. No more booms of explosions, no more alarm sirens, no more computer voices. Just the distant sound of waves hitting the rocks of the coast and the troubled wind coming from the sea.

Gasping for more reasons than just the high-speed running, Sonic slowly picked himself up. "Tails?" Only quiet sobs sounded from the little fox. Sonic knelt next to him, carefully running his hand over his head, smoothing gentle fingers over the flattened ears. "It's okay, Tails, it's over…"

"Nothing's okay!" Tails shot to his feet and for an instant he looked really as if he wanted to hit Sonic, but then he flung himself at his friend, crying into his shoulder.

Sonic could only wrap his arms around him. He didn't know what to say. He had by now realized that Tails was right and saying everything was fine was a totally stupid lie. Nothing was fine. They'd left Knuckles behind. Okay, he'd pretty much begged for it, but they'd left him behind. They'd never left anyone behind until now. Never. And Sonic didn't know how, if he would ever cope with that. He slowly stroked a flat hand over Tails' back, still wanting to say something but not finding any words. As if he'd totally forgotten how to speak. He blinked and felt a single drop of water run down his cheek. But he couldn't cry! How'd he comfort Tails like that?

The little fox however suddenly stiffened in Sonic's arms, winding out of the hug. "Sonic, we have to go and find him!"

The blue hedgehog quickly wiped the tear away. He'd never want Tails to see anything like that on him right now. "Tails, what –?"

"We have to find Knuckles!", the two-tailed fox exclaimed. "He's gotta be out there somewhere!" He grabbed Sonic by the wrist and pulled him back towards the coast.

"But Tails, he's… I'm sorry, but…" Sonic shook his head, brushing another time over his cheeks right below his eyes, reluctantly following Tails. "Tails, listen…"

"No, you listen! We have to hurry! He said he'd swim!" Tails continued to drag Sonic along, back down the hill.

The blue hedgehog shook his head. How should he explain to his little bro that… He found it hard believing it himself, understanding it, yeah, accepting it. But…

The fireballs were gone by now, but the ocean was still fuming, giant white bubbles coming up from various spots. It would need long until all the air from inside the base had found its way to the surface.

A little bit of the green glow still hung over the stirred-up water, like a thick shape of fog, and just as Sonic looked at it, a small, green shining shape shot out of it. It rocketed up diagonally away from the cloud of fog, to what was probably around fifteen meters high, then it suddenly flickered, the green's intensity losing out erratically until it was gone and revealed a small form in deep crimson that continued to fly with the impulse it had had until gravity gradually began to kick in. It dropped towards the blue sea in a perfect parable and caused a big splash when it went underwater.

Sonic's feet had stopped without any of his doing and now Tails was effortlessly yanking on his arm. "That… can't be…"

"See? There he is!" Tails finally let go of Sonic's wrist, instead hopping on the rocks, almost at the water, wildly waving both arms. "Knuckles, we're over here! Here! Knuckles!"

Sonic still stared at the spot where what he still didn't entirely believe was their friend had dropped into the water. Something was wrong… "Tails, fly over there and check what he's doing. He should be up by now."

Tails stopped jumping around and turned to him, eyes wide again. "You think –?!"

"Hurry!" If Knuckles was hurt or something, he'd drown out there. "I can't swim to get him, Tails!"

Thankfully the fox seemed to have understood. He jumped up, twin tails spinning into action, and flew out over the water to where they'd last seen the echidna.

Sonic stood as close to the water as he could get, tapping his foot onto the wet rocks, the spume of the incoming waves sprinkling onto his fur as he watched Tails fly, then hover over the spot Knuckles had disappeared. Right now the hedgehog hated himself for not being able to swim, for being too afraid of water to learn it.

Out over the water, Tails suddenly stopped spinning his tails and dived head-first into the sea. Sonic stood on the tips of his toes to get a better view of what was going on, but it didn't help much. He didn't see anything of Tails anymore either. Five, six, seven, ten, near twenty endless seconds passed until the two-tailed fox shot out of the water in what looked like a geyser, trashing his tails for altitude. His hands held around Knuckles' right arm.

Sonic chewed his lip for the mere moments it took Tails to reach the coast. Knuckles dropped onto the ground when the fox let him down as a dead weight, entirely motionless. Kneeling next to him, Sonic looked just briefly at the pale face and the closed eyes. "Don't do this to us now, Knux, please don't…"

From his other side, Tails reached to shake the echidna. "Knuckles, please! Say something!"

To Sonic's big surprise, Knuckles stirred at the shaking, giving a spluttered cough. Quickly the hedgehog had him by the shoulders and pulled him into a sitting position, knocking his flat palm onto the echidna's back. "Come on, breathe!"

It wouldn't have needed the prompt. Knuckles was breathing either way. He spent almost twenty seconds coughing hard, but he was breathing, so that was something, Sonic supposed. The bit of tension suddenly failed the echidna when he managed to stop coughing and he would have fallen backwards, but Sonic caught his weight and held him up.

"Keep breathing, Knux. Slowly," the blue hedgehog advised. He knew a lot about how it felt having almost drowned. He could enlist a long row of experiences, one of them not older than a few hours, others from years ago, and neither of them were exactly pleasant.

"Don't… worry… I'm kinda…fond… of it," Knuckles gasped out, letting his head drop against Sonic's arm and his eyes still only half open. Holding him like that, the hedgehog could feel him shiver, faint tremors trapped under his soaked fur, but it was so much better than the terrifying stillness when Tails had pulled him out of the water.

"You better be." Sonic smiled a little, relief washing its sweet way through him, now that it was sinking in Knuckles was alive and breathing and looked like he would stay that way.

Tails nodded eagerly. "You got us so worried!"

All the echidna managed was a weak smile and a small nod back before his eyes fell shut again. It took almost a minute that Sonic and Tails spend exchanging worried looks until his breathing had finally calmed and he looked at the others again. "Remind me next time that trying any Chaos Control or turning super on fake Emeralds is a stupid idea." He glanced up at Sonic. He still hadn't protested that Sonic was pretty much the only thing holding him upright, and somewhere in a distant part of Sonic's mind it registered as rather alarming. "Now I know how you felt when you appeared before me on Ark."

The hedgehog smiled again, latching onto the idea that Knuckles was probably just really tired and that he wouldn't want sympathy, at least not the open kind. "The copies always seem to suck," he agreed, focusing on addressing Knuckles' statement and not his dishevelled, soaked appearance.

"Well, they run the Tornado…" Tails shrugged.

Knuckles and Sonic exchanged a glance. "That's about everything they're good for," the hedgehog remarked.

"Agreed." Knuckles smiled wearily, but it came out crooked and more like a pained grimace on still far too pale cheeks.

"You don't look so great," Sonic remarked after all, still not entirely sure if the echidna could sit without help. "Think you'll handle the way back? We can take the train from here to the city, and that's relatively close to where we parked the Tornado, I think. Probably takes forever, but that hardly matters now, huh?"

The guardian nodded, pulling slightly away from Sonic's hold on him to sling an arm around a propped up knee. "As long as you don't want me to race you there…"

Sonic grinned at the returning humour. "We'll do that some other time if you must insist on it."

Knuckles gave a dismissive shake of his dreadlocked head, water dripping from the tips of his spines. "Not really."

Tails smiled at him. "I could have certainly found us a few aerial shortcuts, you know?"

"Sure you could." Knuckles also smiled, allowing Sonic to help him to his feet.

The hedgehog held onto the echidna's arm a tad longer, first to assure he would stay on his feet unaided, then to keep him from getting away. He had refrained from confronting his friend while down, but now that he was upright, anger was having a far easier job at replacing the sharp ache of worry and Sonic could no longer keep it to himself. "What did you think you were doing there?! Playing the sacrifice act?! What made you think your life was less worth saving than ours, huh?!"

Knuckles tore his arm loose from Sonic's grip on him. "It was no sacrifice play! I made a decision, Sonic. I evaluated the situation, I made a decision, and I acted on it. That's what you do all the time, hedgehog! Minus the evaluation bit, perhaps."

Sonic snorted. "Stop trying to dodge this. This is not about me!"

"Oh, something isn't about you? That's new." Knuckles folded his arms, the flare of the sudden confrontation driving a little bit of the missing color back to his cheeks. "Then tell me, hedgehog, what do you think I should have done?"

Sonic huffed, opened his mouth, paused, closed it again. Although he had been very unhappy with Knuckles' actions, now that he was asked he couldn't come up with something intelligent to say in return.

Knuckles sighed, looking less bristled already, and really tired again instead. "See how much smarter you are than me, Sonic?" The guardian shook his head, again droplets of water flying from the drenched long quills, but when he continued it was with less heat. "You were the only one of us three who could get out of there in time by running. Without anyone to hold open the doors, there would have been no running. I'm a good swimmer, maybe not better than Tails, but with more stamina for sure, and I had the chance to use the residual energy from the fake Emeralds to save myself." He sighed. "I did think about it, Sonic. This was the best thing to do. The only thing perhaps. And let's face it, if the roles had been reversed you'd have done just the same."

Sonic uncomfortably shuffled his feet. He'd wanted to be angry with Knuckles. It was easier to be angry with him than deal with the fact he'd been terrified to lose his friend.

And he'd been terrified at what Knuckles had just called a role reversal. Sonic was used to being the one making the sacrifice. He pushed Tails into the space elevator to get him to safety, he was the one to jump into the way of robot fire and evil monsters trying to kill his friends. That someone else did that for him felt… _wrong_ , and a part of him was almost ashamed by it.

He cleared his throat. "I… I just…"

Knuckles smiled, tightly and with visible strain, but understanding glittered in his eyes. "Next time you can be the idiot and I'll shout at you for it afterwards, how's that sound?"

Sonic almost laughed at that, then he caught the way Tails looked between him and Knuckles. "You okay, little bro?"

"No! Next time, _I_ get to shout at both of _you_ , because you're both idiots and you both have zero self-preservation instincts!" With his brow furrowed, Tails looked a mix of angry, worried and utterly adorable. Sonic fought the urge to hug his little brother to make him calm down, but he didn't think Tails wanted that right now.

The little fox took a deep breath instead, gesturing at the two of them. "Both of you always have to jump into the line of fire, for me, for someone else, for that stupid glowing stone or for whatever else looks like it needs saving! And I _admire_ that about you. That's what makes you heroes. It's what I want to be and do, too. And it's also what I hate about you, because I always have to worry you'll get yourself killed by being the heroes!" He sighed, visibly trying to calm himself down, double tails agitatedly playing behind his back. "I know it's part of who you are, and that's okay. But sometimes it just _sucks so much_!"

Sonic caught Knuckles' look, and realized neither of them had expected that outburst, or was in any way prepared to deal with it, but it didn't look like they had any word in the matter.

Tails, eyes still narrowed and firm, looked straight at the echidna. "Knuckles?"

"… Yes?"

"Promise me you'll try to never do something like that in the base again."

Knuckles shook his head. "Tails, I –"

"Just do it." The fox's blue eyes looked determined. He surely wasn't going to take no for an answer.

Seeking support, Knuckles turned to Sonic, but the hedgehog just shrugged. "I really don't know what to say to this, Knux."

Knuckles sighed, looking lost and defeated and utterly groggy. "Is it okay for you Tails if I say I'll try my best?"

"I… guess I can deal with that, yes." Tails smiled a little, apparently unable to actually stay mad for long, in particular while Knuckles was looking like this.

"Great. Now are we all set?" Sonic grinned. It was faked for most parts, but it worked to start breaking the mood. "I'm starving. Aren't you?"

The red echidna shot him a look from under a raised brow. "You're always starving…"

" _You_ are deflecting," Tails noticed, but he was grinning softly and the wrinkles around his eyes were more humour than anger again.

"It is working?" Sonic smiled back at him, for real now.

Tails groaned. " _Yes_. I feel like I didn't have anything real to eat in weeks. And this topic is tiring. Just… try to not die, and we don't need to have it again."

Knuckles nodded solemnly. "I'll try my best, really. Guardian promise."

"Oh, now that's the heavy artillery. How am I supposed to beat that?" Sonic feigned a reproachful look.

Knuckles shrugged. "That's your problem."

Tails nodded, finally a real grin spreading across his face. "It is."

"You'll pay for that. Somehow." Sonic shot Knuckles a not quite serious glare, but then he laughed.

"Now, where did you say that train was? I'm sick of standing here." Knuckles waved a hand around.

"Yeah, it's boring here. Nothing exciting ever happens in this place. Let's go." Sonic grinned, and with his lead the trio slowly made their way up the hill and headed out towards the next train station.


	29. Balance In A Bottle

Knuckles had taken trains before, already on his first trip to the surface, if the entire madness following Chaos' escape from within the Master Emerald could be called something as ridiculously understating as a mere _trip_...

This train they took now, though its station was small and looking somewhat similar to the one near Tails' workshop, was a lot longer than the ones Knuckles had seen so far, and instead of screeching as it rumbled to a stop in front of the waiting group, it glided to a halt smoothly and almost without sound.

Knuckles followed his friends inside, secretly glad to be out of the wind. His fur was still rather damp, and the temperature of the wind betrayed the late season as obviously as the colour that had settled in the trees' leaves back on his island.

They strolled through the long aisle until they reached almost the end of the wagon. There were not many other travelers around.

Tails pointed at four seats, two and two facing each other. "How about here?"

Sonic nodded and looked at him for some sort of confirmation, too. Knuckles just dropped into one of the seats instead of a verbal answer. He still felt quite off balance, a terrible headache threatening to only get worse pulsed sharply behind his forehead, as a result of that his stomach felt decidedly queasy, he was tired and cold and he really didn't care if they happened to sit here or a few rows in any one direction.

The blue hedgehog raised a brow at him, but didn't say anything while he slipped into a seat next to Tails across of Knuckles.

The train started to move, as silently and gently as it had entered the station. Glad to be not madly jostled around as he had come to expect from the surface people's means of transportation, the guardian turned to the window, for a moment watching the coast rush by increasingly fast, then he closed his eyes.

It was hard to try and reach for the Master Emerald like this, to re-center himself. Part of it was probably the distance, the rest might as well have been his own lack of balance as it was right now. Though he had managed to wield the insanity of Metal Sonic's fake Emeralds, even if barely so, he felt like the mad energy had totally scrambled his mind and he was reeling to pull himself together enough to consider himself functional.

He deeply wished he could return to the island, reset and strengthen the torn and damaged link by touch, but he didn't want to ask Tails to fly him home when they got back to his house, it could still be hours until then, they would have to fly in the dark, and Tails looked beat as it was. Knuckles would not ask him for any more favours right now. It had been his oversight that had cost Tails another few awful days in Metal's hands, and he probably deserved to be uncomfortable for a while.

Maybe they could come by a few rings. Maybe that would be enough to balance himself a little, until he could return to the island.

If, given how widely the aftershocks of the blast still echoed in the fabric of chaos all around, rings would even spawn here right now...

Distantly he heard Tails yawn. "I am going to see if this thing comes with a bistro or something. I'm starving, and I think I will need some coke to stay awake. We got almost two hours to Soleanna, then we have to get back to the Tornado on foot, and it's another few hours of flying until we make it home. I'm not going to survive that long on empty."

"Me neither," Sonic agreed. "This trip takes forever. How do people manage? These things are all so slow! I wouldn't take half the time running."

"Well, I'm sick of running for today, so unless you want to run alone, you'll have to stick to the train."

"It's fine. This isn't so bad." Sonic shuffled in his seat from the sounds of it, annoying Knuckles by randomly bumping into his knee and somehow managing to cause a lot of noise just by the way his quills ruffled with the movement against the seat. The echidna longingly thought of the solitude of his island.

When Tails spoke again it was from the aisle, and Knuckles belatedly realised he had gotten up. "So, any wishes?"

"A bottle of good old Chaos Cola it is, and whatever we can get in terms of snacks."

"Okay. Do you want something, too? ... Knuckles?"

"Knux? You okay?" Sonic poked his arm.

The echidna's eyes snapped open. He'd not meant for them to notice. It was his fault, and they shouldn't have to worry about it, least of all little Tails. It had been Knuckles' job to know something was wrong with the Master Emerald, it had also been his job to figure out what, had he done so more quickly Metal Sonic wouldn't have gotten as far, and in the end it had been his decision to try and use the unstable energy for something as critical as a transformation. It had been a foolhardy decision, the kind he would chide Sonic for, the kind he would call reckless and impulsive and idiotic, and if he paid the price for it now the blame was entirely his own to bear.

Opening his eyes resulted in a shooting pain to pierce through his skull at the sudden light. He couldn't quite hide the gasp that he needed to fight down the fresh wave of nausea. "'m good," he managed to get out, and was almost proud at the steadiness of his voice.

Tails was looking at him expectantly. "I'm getting snacks and drinks. Do you want something special?"

"No." He was very far from hungry right now. Drinks sounded good, but he couldn't find it in himself to think about it and choose something. "Just... Whatever you guys want."

"Okay." Tails smiled, though he did look at Knuckles for a moment too long, with a small, searching frown fighting off the smile, but then he disappeared towards the door separating this wagon from the next one.

Knuckles leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes again, desperate instinct reaching out for the familiarity of the Master Emerald's distant resonance, but he failed to get a hold of it. A chaos link was always two ways, he needed to extend something of himself in order to properly re-establish the connection, and he had nothing left to extend as it was.

"Liar."

He blinked at Sonic. " _What_?"

The blue hedgehog frowned, arms crossed and gaze leveled straight at Knuckles. "I said you're a liar, and you're actually not even a good one."

"I'm not -"

"Oh, then you feel great, yes?" Sonic's eyebrows rose up and the pointy ears tipped sideways. "Did you see yourself lately? You're white as a sheet." He leaned closer, continued before Knuckles had a chance to put a word in. "Dude, you almost drowned out there. If you're dizzy or have trouble breathing or something, you need to tell us because it could be quite bad."

Annoyed with the conversation as much as the attention, Knuckles wanted to point out that Sonic had also almost drowned today, that he had in fact been quite much closer to drowning than Knuckles, but the discussion didn't seem worth the effort. "'s not that," he said instead.

"What is it, then?" Finally he recognized the piercing look. Sonic was worried.

Knuckles looked back at him in silence for a moment, then figured he had neither the energy to come up with a smokescreen, nor was he motivated to explain it in detail. "I - there was, the fake Emeralds, and - my head's _killing me_ , Sonic." It wasn't everything, it wasn't the full truth, it wasn't even an actual sentence, but it was close enough all things considered.

And it seemed to work, because Sonic sat back and nodded. "Okay. Makes sense, you know." Knuckles couldn't believe his ears; the hedgehog was actually talking quietly now for once, mindful of the guardian's frayed nerves and frazzled senses. "Take it easy then, and tell us if you feel much worse, 'kay?"

He could do that if it earned him some peace now. Knuckles nodded silently and closed his eyes again.

For a few minutes it was quiet and the echidna focused on breathing, slowly, in and out, and carefully a little deeper as the time passed.

Light footsteps returned from the end of the wagon. "Hey, look, I found -"

"Psht!" Sonic cut Tails off when he was barely within earshot, and Knuckles found himself irrationally and utterly, disbelievingly grateful. He'd never given Sonic credit for having a considerate side, but given his lifestyle, maybe Sonic had gotten his head smashed in by giant robot and the like often enough to know what it was like when your skull felt like it was going to blow up after all.

A pause, then Tails continued a lot more quietly. "Oh, he asleep? I thought he wasn't looking so cool. A little green about the gills."

"Killer headache," Sonic explained while Tails took a seat again from the sounds of it.

"Oh." Tails took another moment's pause. "Do you think -?"

"Yeah, it can only help, really."

Tails' hand lightly touched his arm. "Knuckles? Drink?"

"Thanks." He accepted a bottle from Tails, filled with a dark brown liquid that he recognized as a drink Sonic was fond of. Knuckles didn't care much for it, but his throat was dry and his stomach unsettled, so he could at least give it a shot.

Unscrewing the bottle, he took a careful sip. It was sweet, almost sticky on his teeth. There was a deeper, bitter taste that followed it, barely traceable under the sweetness. Like many of the surface people's drinks, it bubbled and frizzed lightly on his tongue.

In spite of the rather unfamiliar taste and texture, his stomach didn't seem to have anything against the drink, and he settled back and continued taking measured sips of it.

After a minute, he became aware of the warmth that was pooling in his stomach, even though the drink was cool. It wasn't unpleasant, just unexpected and nothing like the effect of a hot tea or other drink.

Another couple minutes later, he was down about a third of the bottle, he started to feel strange. A little bit like nervous, but not quite. A little bit more awake, and as if something was tingling against his currently overly sensitive nerves. Something... chaos?

There was not even a ring in sight.

"Sonic?" He threw the hedgehog a look.

Having apparently already finished half of his own drink and currently busy eating some piece of cake or pastry, Sonic looked up. "Huh?"

"I think something is wrong with this drink."

"Oh?" He threw a look at Knuckles' bottle as if that would give him any clues, then held out his hand. "May I?

Knuckles didn't resist when Sonic reached for the bottle. The blue hedgehog took a sniff at it, then tested the drink. He swallowed with a frown, looking between Knuckles and the bottle as he put it back down. "I have no idea what you mean. Tastes normal to me."

"What do you think is wrong with it?" Resting the large paper bag that had been in his lap on the empty seat next to Knuckles, Tails leaned forward a bit, curious, ears perked.

"I..." Knuckles wasn't quite sure what he thought was weird about it. "It... It tastes bitter and sweet at the same time, it's cold but after a moment it feels warm, and it makes me... _tingly_."

Tails was watching him intently. "That's what it normally tastes like. The warmth and what you describe as 'tingly' might just be the caffeine. That's a mild stimulant, a natural substance that makes people feel more awake. If you drink caffeinated beverages often, you get a lot less sensitive to the effect, but since I assume you don't normally drink coke or coffee, you could be much more sensitive than the average consumer."

Knuckles groaned. Trying to follow a Tails speech was _not_ improving his headache. In fact, it was sometimes sufficient to give him one…

Sonic was looking at him in what Knuckles thought was actual sympathy after enduring Tails' monologue. "It's harmless, I swear. It's also known to help with headaches and stuff." He held up the bottle. "You want it back?"

He really did want it back. He was still a little thirsty, his stomach was starting to feel less like it would revolt, and his hand, still stuck in the damp glove, had felt less cold while holding the bottle. It made no sense but he couldn't think and yes, he wanted it back, even if something was very odd about this beverage.

Sonic handed the bottle over when he nodded, and Knuckles, feeling unable to further deal with his friends right now, cradled it in his hand like something of great value and went back to drinking slowly.

Another couple minutes passed in silence. Knuckles closed his eyes again. He had finished more than half of his coke, and maybe Sonic was right, because the roaring pain that had before send piercing jolts all through his skull and down his spine from there was down to a dull throb. The sense of nervousness had gone from the unspecific strange sense of disturbance to a milder feeling of alertness that was no longer uncomfortable.

The tingle was still there, it had spread from the initial disorienting sense of it to a sensation like pins and needles, to the illusion of a low vibration under his fingertips and in his gut, along with a hair-raising prickling in his neck, to finally a vague sense that returned him to his initial illusionary perception of grabbing golden rings when there were none.

It was so persistent that he opened his eyes several times to check for larger amounts of rings suddenly spawning around them, only to never find anything.

Something was quite wrong with his perception. Maybe it was even worse than he had thought?

Had he been not so obviously out of it, he would have said there was a chaotic disturbance around here, but they were moving quickly in the train, the feeling travelled with them without changing much, and it just had to be him, and not the environment.

But concentrating on the sensation brought along another discovery, and it was finally a good one. Still distant and faint, he could feel the Master Emerald brushing against his mind. It was not strong or steady enough to grasp, but it was a milestone from the blinded scrambling he'd done for it before.

When he opened his eyes the next time, he found Sonic studying him and ground out an instinctive, irritated " _What_?" that earned him a brief flash of a familiar smile across the hedgehog's face.

"You're getting back a little colour," Sonic noticed, unruffled as usually by his tempers. "Feeling better?"

He nodded carefully. It was true.

"Do you want a snack now?" Tails smiled as he reached for the paper bag and held it out at him. "We saved a few things. You can pick what you like."

Well, maybe he could try something. With the composition of the coke, he was fairly sure he wasn't lacking sugar, but maybe something real to fill his stomach would be better than the artificial sweetness of this surface dweller drink, as well as it had served him so far.

He placed his bottle on a small table that folded out of the wall under the window and reached for the bag Tails was offering. It contained several pieces of pastry, some chocolate covered, some in a powdery sugar coat. He reached for one of the sugared ones that had the shape of a ring.

Tails was watching him dig into the bag. "You want the donut?"

"That's what it's called?"

"Yep." Tails nodded.

Sonic smiled, giving him a rather comically overeager thumbs up. "They're good!"

Knuckles picked up the donut and tried it. It was soft and sweet. Tasty, too. He wondered if it would go well with grape juice.

Or with coke. The fine powdery sugar was kind of cough-inducing...

He picked up his bottle again for a quick drink between bites, and promptly almost dropped it. Something like chaos tingled under his fingers as they closed around the glass. "Whoa!"

Both of his friends were staring at him in alarm. "What's up?!"

Knuckles was staring too, but at the bottle. "It's -" He blinked, carefully brushing fingertips over the glass again, testing the feel of it. "I think there's energy in my drink."

It sounded _idiotic_. He realized that as soon as the words left his mouth. There couldn't be energy in his drink. His damaged nerves were playing tricks on him, and by blurting this out now without thinking first, he had informed his friends that he really wasn't quite up to his game.

But when he quickly looked up at the others, Sonic was kicked back in his seat looking rather relaxed again, not like he was doubting Knuckles' sanity, and Tails' face held a small, curious frown.

"Well, it's not called 'Chaos Cola' for nothing," Sonic trailed.

Knuckles blinked. He'd thought it was a weird brand name, like Soap Shoes. They could not really have shoes made of soap. But then again... "You... You have chaos energy, in a beverage?" That couldn't be true.

"Yes. It's not much, probably translates to less than a handful of rings per bottle, and that would be the largest size, not these little ones." Tails shrugged lightly, not looking the least bit bothered. "The company started with Chaos Soda; I think they use water from a spring that's at a place where always a lot of rings appear, and some of their energy sort of bleeds into the water."

"I've seen a documentary on that once," Sonic added. "They use the water for the soda and the coke."

Tails shrugged. "But it's widely accepted it's a marketing gag and the amount of energy in that drink is so small it's not going to have any effect. I don't know anyone who feels anything special after drinking it. The tons of sugar and the caffeine, sure, but drinking it can't keep you from even suffering a paper cut for all I know." The little fox leaned forward. "Are you saying you can sense the tiny, tiny amount of chaos energy in the coke? Then you're even more sensitive than I thought."

"I -" Knuckles shook his head, weighing the bottle in hand. He was starting to feel less muddled, and in turn less disoriented overall. What didn't mean the perception made sense, or that he trusted his memory of the last couple of minutes. He couldn't feel a handful of rings, he shouldn't be feeling this if that's what was in the drink, but he was so frazzled right now, and- "I'm not sure. I felt… _something,_ already when I started drinking it, but nothing of it makes sense and it's - I'm not sure," he finished lamely.

Sonic had folded his arms across his chest. "How's the head?", he asked casually.

"Better," Knuckles admitted guardedly.

The hedgehog shrugged. "Well, apparently _something_ is helping."

Rubbing his chin, Tails was downright scrutinizing Knuckles now. "You do look better. If it's enough energy for you to feel, maybe we're safe to assume it's enough to have an effect?" He frowned. "Then again, you usually live in direct proximity of the Master Emerald, and you say you're somehow connected to it. If something so small sets you off, the interference of the Emerald should wreck havoc on you."

"That's not the same," Knuckles found himself saying before he'd properly thought through if and how much information he wanted to share. "It's not the same sort of energy, and - and I'm not, as you put it, connected."

Sonic raised a puzzled brow. "We were sure you were and -"

"No, I mean not now."

Tails blinked. "What do you mean, not now?"

Knuckles realized too late that he would now have to explain himself, and he had no idea how. "I - there was, the copies you made, I used their energy. It was a lot of energy, a lot of unbalanced energy, something _snapped_ , and now I'm -"

"It hurt you," Tails interrupted him. "Knuckles, I'm sorry. I never meant for anything like this to happen and -"

Knuckles stared. "But I'm not mad at you! Nothing of this is your fault. _I_ made an error of judgement. Several, really, and-"

"Is it bad?", Tails interrupted him again, wide-eyed.

Actually, Knuckles had no idea. Nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before. It had probably never happened to another guardian before him, either. He didn't, couldn't know what to expect. "I - I think I'll be okay." It was the only thing he could say to Tails, really.

The fox nodded quietly, obviously not taking Knuckles' words at face value right now.

"Maybe you should finish the miracle drink?" Sonic gestured at the half full bottle of coke, thankfully looking a lot less as if he'd expect him to fall over dead than Tails. "If it's an energy problem, maybe you gotta refill the reserves."

It was nothing like this. Yes, maybe it did have to do with exhaustion, chaotic and otherwise, but the core of the problem, Knuckles was sure, was primarily a balance thing.

But if it was real, natural chaos energy in this odd drink, it was certainly a lot more balanced than he was right now, and it did indeed seem to help somewhat.

Experimentally, Knuckles went back to drinking. He finished the donut in between, and he had to admit that he was feeling better, less off kilter, less like something was gonna snap. The backlash of something already _having_ snapped still stung sharply enough, but it had gotten quite bearable by now if he compared it to what it'd been like a few minutes ago.

Seeing him put away the empty bottle, Sonic held up his own. "Want the rest?"

Knuckles found he couldn't say no to that. He drank down the remainder of Sonic's Chaos Cola rather quickly, although he didn't even feel thirsty anymore. But there was something there and -

From the back of his mind came a sudden nudge of energy, and it wasn't a ring or whatever exactly the surface people managed to put into their drinks. Knuckles gasped, eyes squeezing shut as he desperately tried to get hold of it. The lack of synchronousness was still obvious, a painful grating along his nerves, but something had settled, too, and the ripple of Emerald power didn't slip through his hold this time. Instead, the familiar link snapped back into place with a sudden rush of warmth that burned along his senses with a vibrant thrum and resonated through his entire body and mind.

The echidna released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, melting into the cushioning of the seat with the utter relief of it.

"Knux?! _Knuckles_!" Sonic was shouting. Why was Sonic shouting?

"Knuckles, say something!" Tails was shouting, too. Couldn't he relax for just a second here?

Knuckles opened his eyes, finding the others staring at him, Sonic's hand stretched out as if to reach for him.

He withdrew it when he met Knuckles' gaze. "Hey, um, you alright there?"

Knuckles nodded, a smile spreading over his face without any of his even trying. "I'm good," he said. He glanced down on the second empty bottle. If they'd told him yesterday the surface dwellers had filled chaos energy into bottles for drinking, it would have seemed like utter blasphemy to him. It still kind of did, but considering what else he'd seen today, it was so harmless in comparison, and it had fixed the total lack of balance he wouldn't have been able to control by himself. Funny how much your view on something could be swayed in so short a time.

"You sure?" Tails still looked worried.

Knuckles smiled again. He was still tired and sore, but he was good. They'd stopped what he'd been sure was a total catastrophe with virtually no long term harm done, Tails was safe, the Island and Master Emerald were safe, he could feel that now, distant but clear feedback, Sonic was free from within the gem, and his head was still in one piece and attached to his neck. "I'm fine, Tails."

Also Tails finally, properly smiled. Unfortunately the smile didn't last all that long however. "And you're really not mad that I made those fake Emeralds? You got hurt because of them!"

Knuckles shook his head. "I'm okay, Tails," he repeated, "and I decided for myself what I was going to do. None of it is your fault, really."

"But the fake Emeralds were my fault!" Tails' large ears were drooping again.

Next to Tails, Sonic was watching them, now longer slouched into his seat, but he didn't say anything.

Knuckles focussed back on Tails. "They were Metal Sonic's fault."

"I knew what I was doing, or at least, I knew it was terrible," the fox argued. "I should have -"

"What, let him torture you or kill you or what?!" Knuckles cut himself off, shook his head again, trying to calm his temper. The kid didn't deserve being snapped at. "Look. Remember when we met? What did I do?"

"Appeared out of nowhere and punched the Chaos Emeralds out of Sonic while he was super?" Tails blinked, confused.

Knuckles nodded. "And what did I do then?"

"Kept appearing out of nowhere to make bridges drop away under us and stuff," Sonic threw in, apparently unable to be quiet for longer.

"But it wasn't your fault, Knuckles, Eggman had tricked you into thinking we were evil." Tails was frowning now, arms crossed tightly.

The echidna shook his head. "I _meant_ to drop you into pits, Tails. Were you mad at me for it?"

"No! Well, at first I was, but then we found out what was happening and - I said that it wasn't -"

"I did it on _purpose_ , Tails," Knuckles interrupted him, "I knew what I was doing and I meant to do it. You made the fake Emeralds because you were forced to; you said yourself you didn't mean to make them. If you forgave me that I was stupid and fell for Eggman, shouldn't I forgive you that you were _smart_ and didn't let Metal Sonic hurt you?"

"I... Um." It must've been the first time ever that Knuckles had succeeded in rendering Tails speechless. At another time, he'd probably be amused.

Next to Tails, Sonic turned to the window, grin on his face. Well, one of them actually was amused.

Knuckles decided to ignore the hedgehog. There was something else he should say to Tails while was at it. "If anyone should be sorry, it's me. I was an idiot, I didn't get that you had to be with a fake Sonic if the real Sonic was in the Master Emerald all that time, and it's my fault we weren't faster to rescue you and stop Metal before... You know."

Tails still frowned, but his ears had picked up only to swivel backwards and he was almost glaring at Knuckles know. "But you _were_ fast enough to save me, and you stopped the fake Master Emeralds, too!"

'Stopped' wasn't quite what Knuckles would've called it. Yes, he'd not blown up the planet, he'd not even blown up _himself_ , and he should probably be satisfied with that. "The whole base is gone, I think," he said anyway.

Sonic turned back from his window. "And I'm glad, you know? Did I thank you yet? I should. Thank you for not sparing this horrible place and letting it meet its fate!"

Knuckles stared at the hedgehog. "You -" He couldn't really mean that, could he?

Before the guardian could decide if he thought Sonic was being serious or not, he realised Tails was laughing. Laughing. Actually laughing, so much he was hiccuping in between.

Knuckles felt a smile tug on his lips, shooting a look at the hedgehog again. "You -"

Sonic lifted innocent eyes from watching Tails, who had doubled over and was clutching his stomach. "I what?"

"Nothing." Knuckles shook his head. It looked like Sonic had, with a silly comment, achieved what he'd failed to properly do with earnest words, but in the end, it didn't really matter what cheered Tails up, did it? He smiled at the hedgehog, and Sonic actually understood, because he mouthed a "welcome" at him.

Tails was wiping at his eyes, struggling to regain composure. "I'm sorry, it wasn't even funny..."

Sonic drew an arm around the fox, pulling him closer and grinning. "Come on, what's wrong with a good, unreasonable laughing fit? Gets rid of some adrenaline even better than shouting obscenities at Knuckles." A wink was shot at the echidna.

For a second Knuckles wondered if he'd been just insulted, then he decided he didn't even care. Suddenly, he also thought it was funny. He grinned at his friends. "I don't think the other passengers will enjoy listening to the shouting. Or to the obscenities."

Sonic shrugged. "No? There's hardly anyone here, and doesn't everyone love listening to some good obscenities shouted on a train in the afternoon?"

For a moment, Knuckles wondered if it was maybe some surface thing to actually listen to other people's arguments on trains, then he thought Sonic was messing with him, and then he thought it was funny either way, and soon all of them were laughing, and Knuckles had no idea why anymore.


	30. High Flyin' Trio

The half an hour hike from the train station to the beach where they had landed the Tornado turned out to be a remarkably enjoyable affair and nobody mentioned anything about fake Master Emeralds or evil robots for now.

Knuckles alternated between listening to the familiar, distant hum of the real, one and only Master Emerald, quiet and peaceful in the back of his mind, and listening to Sonic and Tails chatting about all sorts of seemingly random things.

The little fox seemed in a good mood now, double tails twirling in happy agitation, and the blue hedgehog didn't once complain about the slow pace. He seemed an almost unfamiliar sort of relaxed right now, happy but not bouncing, and although he looked a lot more wrecked than he acted, with this assortment of old and new bruises, cuts and burns, right now he appeared neither really hurt, nor actually tired. It was a Sonic thing. Not stubbornness, not per se. Something closer to how Knuckles would lean on the Master Emerald's energy, but there didn't seem an outside source. Maybe it was one of the most puzzling things about the hedgehog, that he seemed his own energy source at times, hardly in need for a driving purpose of any kind, or if he did, it was nothing Knuckles could understand.

A step or two ahead of the echidna, Sonic said something that sent Tails into pearls of laughter again and Knuckles found himself grinning as well, without even having understood the joke. The mood was catching either way, and he still felt a bizarre mixture of tired and buzzed.

The mood only shifted when the path started angling down the rocks surrounding the sandy beach in narrow turns and they could catch the first glimpse of the biplane. A slight air of worry surrounded the hedgehog then, and Knuckles apprehensively looked between Sonic and Tails. The echidna had been worried about them having broken Tails' beloved biplane before, but now, relieved and giddy for reasons he didn't even fully understand, he found he couldn't replicate the feeling.

Instead, he watched Sonic and Tails as the latter swept up into the cockpit with spinning tails. Sonic stayed on the ground next to the plane, instead of immediately bounding up onto his favourite spot atop the biplane's upper wing, green eyes fixed on Tails.

There was a brief moment of quiet after the fox had settled into his seat, then an incredulous "What did you _do_?" sounded from the Tornado's cockpit.

Sonic winced. "Um, well, you see –"

"Did you… did you hot-wire her?" Tails was crawling deeper into the cockpit as he spoke, presumably to get a proper look at whatever damage Sonic had inflicted.

Taking up the position next to the fidgeting hedgehog, Knuckles was starting to get a little concerned now, too, gazing up towards Tails who was hunched over in the cockpit, shoulders shaking. He wasn't crying, was he?

Sonic threw Knuckles a brief look, ears flat and spines raised slightly in his neck, then focused back on Tails and the biplane. "Look, Tails, there weren't any keys and – I'm sorry, bro, really, I'll –"

Tails pulled a few quick, short breaths, then finally turned back to the side to look down on them, hand over his mouth, but when he withdrew it a second later, it revealed a grin. "Please, _please_ tell me someone filmed this!" He bit his lip, snorted, then started giggling uncontrollably.

"You're laughing?" Sonic blinked. "He's laughing." The latter was said half towards Knuckles, and the echidna watched the blue pointy ears tip back up and the hedgehog's spines fall back into relaxed curves.

Up in the Tornado, Tails was struggling to speak through his laughter. "I'm trying to _imagine_ – How did you even – Oh my! – to think I _missed_ this!"

Sonic had arched a brow now. "You're not mad? Nothing irreparably broken then?"

Tails shook his head, still near breathless with laughter. "No, 's fine," he managed, visible struggling to stop laughing.

Sonic let out his breath in a sigh, finally taking the leap up onto the wings. "I'd help you repair it, too."

The offer sent Tails right back into giggles after he'd just started getting a grip on himself.

Knuckles grinned, climbing up into the rear seat. "I think your handiwork didn't convince him to hire you as an assistant yet, Sonic."

Sonic frowned for just a second, then he shrugged lightly. "Well, let me rephrase that: I'll make you chili dogs while you work?"

Knuckles shook his head with a snort of laughter of his own – to think anyone but Sonic would actually _want_ that stuff for food – and settled comfortably into the seat. The plush seats on the train had been softer and more spacious, but by now the Tornado's back seat was welcomingly familiar.

In front of him, Tails was finally succeeding in calming down enough to speak properly again. "It's a deal. And you'll have to tell me exactly what you did… I can't believe it even _worked_!"

"Well, you see, at first it didn't," Knuckles noticed, "I had to spin the propeller for Sonic."

Tails span around on him, eyes wide. "You… Did you _hand-swing_ it?!"

"Uh, if that's what it's called?" Knuckles frowned.

The little fox shook his head, brushing a hand through his bangs. "We're probably lucky you didn't cut off any arms or something…"

Knuckles exchanged a look with Sonic. It had not seemed that bad a danger at the time… A little risky perhaps, but it wasn't that he could've realistically evaluated the situation...

"What do we do now to start her?" Sonic gestured down towards the dashboard. "Still no keys, and I… kinda ripped the cables?" He grinned weakly.

"No problem, just give me a minute!" Tails disappeared into the space in front of his seat, and somehow he fit much better there than Sonic had.

After really just barely more than a minute, he had somehow rigged the torn cables up to something that looked like a switch, pressing it got the engine running without any need for pulling at the propeller, and Sonic looked a combination of amazed about the quick fix and disappointed he'd had so much more trouble.

The latter didn't last long however, and soon the biplane was climbing up towards the lowering sun over the sea. Sonic was sitting down on the wing behind the propeller, legs dangling casually, Tails was piloting the biplane with just one hand on the controls, the other pointing here and there to whatever sights he'd spotted, and Knuckles kipped back further into the seat and listened to their conversation and the steady engine sounds.

* * *

The green fog had cleared, the chaos energy distributed widely to the point of dissipating into the natural environments and the ocean twinkled in the reddish light of the setting sun.

Not much remained of Aquatic Base. The center area that had witnessed the whole power of the chaos explosion was gone without a trace left and a deep, round crater sat in the ground in its place. Slowly the debris was settling under the waves though and the first shy fish were beginning to explore the area.

The outer parts of the base remained in fragments of tunnels and chambers. Most air had bled out of them by now and cool salty ocean water went through the tunnels, pushed in gently by the rising tide. In a few days, most animals would be back and in a few months, the first plants and corals would grow on the pale blue metal. Soon sealife would claim the former base as ground to grow a new reef.

At the outer edge of the round crater, a broken form of blue lay kipped against the rock the pressure of the explosion shockwave had thrown it at. The royal blue outer armor bore deep scratches and dents and the right leg was twisted a ninety degrees in the wrong direction at the knee.

A small, yellow coral fish curiously approached the robot's body, its fins flicking wildly as it first circled it and then probed its nose into the opening of the jet in the belly. The engine core still radiated a portion of heat though and after a short while the little fish deemed it suspicious and turned away to search another hiding place. With a few quick beats of its fins, it was just a dot of yellow in the distance anymore, quickly swallowed up by the deep blue of the sea that darkened quickly now with approaching nightfall.

Left alone, Metal Sonic's damaged shell appeared dead and empty. But the outside look was misleading. Protected deep inside the robot's armor, a small emergency battery still held energy. The red optics glowed dimly for a few seconds before blinking back out as a subroutine of Metal's AI directed the fragile remains of power to the emergency location transmitter.

A low frequency radio signal passed through the dark salty water and a portion of the waves managed to worm through the surface of the sea. It carried on through the atmosphere, reflecting here and there and finally hit on an antenna. Hundreds of kilometers from the signal's source, a priority window popped up on a computer screen.

"What is that?", the voice of the only person in the large room rang out when the notification triggered by the emergency signal blocked his view on the blue prints for new robot models he had been working on.

From behind dark, mirroring goggles, Ivo Robotnik's eyes scanned the text and a wicked half smile spread on the robotist's face. "Why no… Metal Sonic." The human grinned, his right reaching to brush through his moustache. "I was wondering what you were up to."

He chuckled, his eyes crossing over the text again. It was nothing much but coordinates and a note of total system failure. Whatever had happened, Metal Sonic had sustained very heavy damage.

Robotnik frowned and drilled the right half of his moustache between his fingers. While it was true that Metal Sonic had run off on him, and that he had betrayed him once before that, locked him up and tried to take over the world himself… Robotnik failed to be mad at him. After the Metal Madness incident he had spend months searching for Metal Sonic, he'd taken him to his base, repaired all his systems, given him upgrades to improve his function. He had failed to understand why he even bothered. Metal Sonic was just a robot, a machine, and apparently one with flaws and quirks.

But there was more to it. Metal Sonic was also Robotnik's most outstanding creation. His brainchild. In a way, this robot was the greatest thing he had ever created and probably he was the greatest thing he would ever create. Metal Sonic's AI was more than a program. It learned, it improved on its own, it developed a personality without any of his doing. Metal Sonic was, as far as any robot could be, alive.

Several of his robots had developed signs of life and personality before. Gamma, one of the first E-series robots… although in his case it was most likely to be blamed on malfunction caused by the Flicky inside the robot. E-123 Omega was another example and to be fair Robotnik had no idea what had caused the sudden development of 'life' in this robot, one he had pretty much discarded because he didn't require its service anymore. Smaller models like Orbot and Cubot had been given an AI that came close to being truly independent and flexible in its decision-making, intended entirely to serve for his personal amusement. 'Mad scientist planning to take over the world' was a lonesome job on the long run.

But Metal Sonic was different than all other robots to Robotnik. Not only in his design, purpose and unique programming. In a way that felt irrational to Robotnik, he valued Metal Sonic. He didn't mind that he tried to turn against him (even carried through with it) several times. Metal Sonic was just… a misled child. His complex AI knew things as free opinion and apparently dealing with these wasn't easy in a robot.

However, he would learn. Robotnik was sure. With Metal Sonic, he was raising not a robot. He was raising a partner in crime, a future supporter, second-in-command maybe. One whose intelligence and cunning fit his own. An equal, out of himself.

Robotnik shook his head to himself slowly. Maybe he had taken the wrong approach all the time. Whenever Metal Sonic had gone ways he didn't want him to, he'd tried to reprogram him, remove the memory files concerning actions Robotnik didn't approve of. It had never kept Metal from coming up with new things he wasn't supposed to do, though. Maybe… maybe he'd have to try reasoning sensibly with him. Explain his plans to him.

The scientist copied the coordinates from the emergency message and checked the position. He frowned. He was damned if he had any idea how Metal Sonic had gotten himself out into the depths of Wave Ocean. Or how he had damaged himself heavily enough to trigger the ELT. Hopefully a few things would remain in the databanks to fill him in on what had happened.

Robotnik stood from his seat and went to prepare an underwater recovery. The blue prints could wait. Metal Sonic couldn't wait much longer.

It would probably be a long day. And a long night.

* * *

The slowly setting sun was washing soft orange hues over the world beneath the Tornado's wings. Sonic watched hills, loops and the occasional building throw longer and longer shadows. It was pretty, and peaceful.

When Sonic's staying gaze returned to look over his friends, he found Knuckles slouched deeply into his seat, blinking slowly and looking a little sweaty and somewhat too pale again. He was staring somewhat worriedly at one of his large hands, it was shaking a little, and he looked like he was trying very hard to figure out why.

The hedgehog bit his lip. "Damn..." He'd not thought that through well enough... "Hey, Tails?"

The little fox looked up from his instruments and navigation. "What's it?"

Sonic grimaced, and it tugged uncomfortably on the laser fence burn on his forehead. "Please tell me we carry some emergency candy."

Tails raised a brow at him. "You don't look like you won't survive until we're home," he said. "It's called emergency equipment for a reason, Sonic."

"It's not for me." He pointed, Tails turned over his shoulder, and stiffened at the sight of Knuckles.

"Wow," he mumbled, turning back to his control panel and engaging the auto pilot. "Just gimme a second." Head first, he dived towards the space under his seat so that only two twirling tails could be seen.

Sonic waved at their friend in the backseat. "Knuckles."

The echidna blinked at him slowly. "Leave me alone, Sonic," he grumbled, but then he frowned at the hedgehog. "Something's weird," he trailed, apparently willing to talk to him anyway, and it sounded a bit like a question rather than a complaint.

"Yeah, you're crashing." Sonic flinched.

It would have probably been funny and sort of entertaining to watch Knuckles have a sugar crash after drinking much more Chaos Cola than he could possibly be used to if he had not looked quite so tired even before. Back on the train, it had seemed a good idea for a quick fix, but now that he thought about it, the unexpectedly positive effect of some trace chaos energy aside, he probably should have thought twice about letting someone who usually only drank water, and maybe the occasional tea or juice he could make on his island, down one and a half bottles of liquid sugar.

It seemed a little unfair, Sonic himself at least usually had a proper high before a crash, but while Knuckles had been a bit pumped and in a better mood than was usual, he'd been far from bouncing. It seemed a waste to Sonic.

Knuckles stared at him. "We're crashing?! Tails?!" Somehow he managed to sound equally tired, annoyed and in a bit of a panic.

Tails reappeared from his search for their emergency provisions just in time. "No, we're fine. _You_ on the other hand had far too much coke."

"Did not." Knuckles frowned, suddenly sounding a very familiar sort of irritated.

"Oh yes, you did." Tails held out a handful of colourfully wrapped candy at Knuckles. "Here, try some of those."

Knuckles suspiciously studied the candy. "What's that?"

"Some more quick sugar to get a short boost again, until we can get some real food to make up for it." Sonic smiled strainedly. "Trust me, it works. I'm an expert."

Tails nodded. "He is. Super fast metabolism. We carry the candy for a reason, you know."

"It's medical candy," Sonic agreed.

"'m not sick." Knuckles still blinked drowsily, but he looked less grumpy again. "I'm just real tired suddenly, and kinda cold, but it's not cold and -"

"Come on, try some. They're good, too."

This time, the red echidna reached to take the sweets Tails was practically waving at him, and Sonic sat back more relaxed on his spot on the wing. Usually, he was fond of it, but the burns, cuts and bruises he'd gathered over the course of their most recent adventure made him altogether sore, and the couch at Tails' workshop sounded so much more promising than the hard metal of his biplane.

Just a few minutes later, Knuckles was looking less like a reason for genuine concern and much more like he would be fine after a decent meal and a night of sleep again.

Trailing violet eyes met Sonic and the hedgehog shot his friend a grin. "Better?"

Knuckles frowned in instinctive annoyance again, but then he shrugged and nodded hesitantly. "Hm. Chaos, this is a really weird day."

Sonic laughed. "You apparently don't tag along often enough then after all; you should have really gotten used to it. Did we tell you about the time where we ended up in a parallel universe during a storm? Or the time when I got transported into an ancient book by a genie?"

"... Which I still am pretty sure were fever hallucinations," Tails mumbled, shaking his head.

"Were not!"

"Uh-huh." Tails grinned at him. "You were sick with a cold bad enough to lie on the sofa all day on purpose and _read_. That's not far from delirious in terms of sickness."

"Sonic reads books when he's delirious?" Knuckles was grinning too now.

"No, I don't." Sonic folded his arms, a motion that also pulled a few things that didn't appreciate being pulled. "I sometimes read, yes. I was not delirious, though. I remember quite well what happened."

"You remember quite well what you dreamed about," Tails contradicted, "and it was utterly unbelievable. Nobody gets sucked into a book."

"Well, apparently, I also get sucked into Knuckles' Emerald." Sonic tilted his head. "Would you believe that if someone told you?"

Tails tilted his head. "Probably not, but Knuckles says you were in it, too, and if two people have the same hallucination, then it's most likely not a hallucination after all."

"That... sounds reasonable, kinda," Knuckles trailed from behind Tails.

"Yes, but it means that you always need to have some company, otherwise nobody is willing to believe the things that happen to you." It was kind of funny, because their lives were so full of insane things that something like getting sucked into a magic gemstone shouldn't really come as much of a surprise, Sonic thought. And how was that different to ending up inside a magic book?

Knuckles was watching him with a thoughtful frown. "I don't think I would believe you if you told me about the last couple of days…"

"See, that's right what I mean!" Sonic nodded at him. "We should tell someone, just to see if they believe it! We could tell –"

"Rouge, we have to tell Rouge," Tails cut in suddenly.

Knuckles' answer was an immediate, instinctive "No!" that put an as immediate grin on Sonic's face.

"I'm serious," Tails noticed over the resulting glaring contest. "She was investigating Sonic's doppelganger, remember, and I promised her I'd tell her about it if we found out something new."

"If you promised," Knuckles muttered, sinking back into his seat, arms still crossed, but no longer arguing even with glares. Sonic grinned.

Tails turned over his shoulder to look at the echidna. "Explaining to her that Metal Sonic was behind everything will clear Sonic's name," he said.

"And get her and GUN out of our spines," Sonic added.

Knuckles nodded silently to that.

Tails reached to activate the telephone function of the Tornado's computer. Gazing down into the cockpit, Sonic watched him draw up a dialpad on the screen over the navigation map and dial up a number.

It rang a couple of times until the line opened with a cracking noise and they heard Rouge's short "Yes?" coming from the speaker.

"Rouge? It's Tails."

"Tails? What can I do for you, sweetie? But make it quick, I'm on a bit of a schedule. Apparently someone chaos blasted _something_ sky high over at Wave Ocean and they called pretty much everyone in to investigate. It's a real riot here."

Tails grimaced. "Um, about that..."

"What? You know what blew there?" Something about her voice sounded amused now. "I should have known if something blows up, you and your pals can't be far."

Tails seemed to shrink further into the seat and Sonic leaned into the cockpit to be able to speak into the microphone even over the wind. "Rouge? Sonic here. And yeah, we were there. It was Metal Sonic. He had an underwater secret base at Wave Ocean. He sorta... tried to build a super weapon out of himself, and, let's say, kind of like last time, it didn't go as planned."

From the cockpit below, both Tails and Knuckles threw him grateful looks for so easily steering around mentioning their involvement in the whole mess. Sonic smiled at his friends while listening to Rouge's answer.

"Let me guess, he was using GUN's Chaos Drive material for this weapon?" She laughed. "Someone here will be very glad to hear who was behind this, and very ticked with R&D for never getting such a blast out of a drive if they tried."

Tails flinched again, and Knuckles looked like he should probably have some more sugar again. "Well," Sonic drawled, "if you find what's left of Metal, you can ask him."

"By the first satellite images we got a few minutes ago, I'd probably have to swim, and I only get myself wet for valuables, not for broken insane robots. They can find someone else for that." Sonic thought you could hear the grin in her voice as she said it, and it was easy to imagine, too.

"You could ask Shadow to do it," he suggested.

There was a moment of pause in which an incredulous grin spread over Tails' face, Knuckles turned to look down the side of the plane with a chuckle, then Rouge's voice returned through the phone. "I think I'd rather stay alive, thank you."

Sonic leaned back into the wind, imagined an enraged Shadow hunting Rouge through the flooded corridors of the destroyed Aquatic Base in scuba gear, and grinned.


	31. Epilogue

Sonic leaned forwards to catch a look into the pod. There was still about a plateful of noodles left. The hedgehog glanced up at his friends. "Anyone still want something?"

Tails grinned and shook his head, leaned back against the sofa, a flat hand over his stomach. "I'm full. Can't eat another piece."

"You can have the rest. I'm all served." Knuckles was grinning too, slouched into an armchair to Sonic's right. He looked an unfamiliar sort of relaxed now, and Sonic idly noted the rarity of seeing him thus, in particular off his island. Maybe, and just maybe, he was getting used to the company and to Tails' workshop. Sonic smiled to himself even as Knuckles continued: "And knowing you didn't have anything for a week, I guess it's only fair you have the rest."

Sonic chuckled, happily loading the remains of their hasty and simple dinner onto his plate. "I think you have a great point there." He maneuvered an overloaded spoon of noodles into his mouth, through a mere miracle loosing none on the way.

Tails thoughtfully watched him. "I still wonder where you were all that time. A week is really long, you know..."

Knuckles shrugged. "Inside the Master Emerald?"

"In a Special Zone?", Sonic added a second option through a mouthful of food.

"Yeah, but…" Tails looked between them. "What if that's the same? What if Special Zones are inside the Master Emerald? Or inside the Chaos Emeralds? Or if… The Emeralds are, theoretically speaking, objects from a hyperspace, or a higher dimension if you want. That's why they can easily ignore laws of nature and manipulate time and space. But what if the Emeralds are not just objects, but… gates to this hyperspace? Like portals! And everytime we entered a Special Zone, we entered a new area in this dimension? And that's why when you collect an Emerald inside a Special Zone, the entire zone kind of disappears, because you, literally, took the gate?"

Sonic swallowed his noodles, averting his gaze to Knuckles, but the echidna just shrugged lightly. Apparently his understanding of Tails' words went just as far as Sonic's own. Not very far.

Tails didn't seem to care he didn't get any proper replies. "Or there is just one Special Zone and it just keeps changing?"

"Chaos always changes. That's, if you want to call it that, the most reliable thing about it," Knuckles noticed.

Eyebrows raised, Sonic stared at the echidna, a silent 'don't tell me you understand a thing of what Tails says'. The guardian shrugged to it, settling to lean his right elbow onto the armrest and resting his head against his large palm.

Fine, then. "You're saying I was in the same place all the time, no matter how different everything looked?", the hedgehog wondered.

"Maybe. Maybe you weren't anywhere at all, maybe you simply didn't exist during the time you were inside the Master."

Sonic was still staring at his red friend. "And what's with what I did and saw there?"

"Hallucinations maybe. You gotta admit you were quite heavily drugged when I got you out of it…"

A frown formed on Sonic's face. "You don't really believe that."

"No," Knuckles admitted. "I think… I think I want to believe that there's a whole world inside the Master Emerald. 'Cause a part of me has always believed that. Maybe… maybe a part of me actually belongs there…"

"If you plan on taking a trip, you better tell us how to get someone out of your shiny rock again," Sonic remarked. "It'd really suck if you got yourself into the Emerald without a return ticket."

Knuckles flashed another rare if weary grin. "No worries. No trips planned anytime soon."

Tails laughed. "Let me know if you change your mind, I'd be very interested in proving my theories on all these things."

Sonic lightly shook his head. "Trust me, a few minutes inside a Special Zone are really enough. On the long run, the place drives you nuts."

"What do you think, Tails?" Knuckles turned to the fox. "Maybe we should send Sonic in there again then? There's nothing to ruin…"

"Oh, you –" Sonic threw his spoon at the echidna, scoring a hit right between the eyes.

"Hey!" Knuckles sat upright with a jolt, picked up the spoon and had already lifted it to hurtle it back at Sonic when Tails cut in.

"Guys!"

Knuckles and Sonic turned to the two-tailed fox, chorusing a "Huh?"

"Peace." Tails smiled. "We're not sending anyone anywhere. It's way better being together again, right?"

Knuckles' face melted into a mellow smile in spite of whatever temper Sonic would have expected for comeback. Instead, the echidna just settled back in his relaxed position. "Hmm…"

Sonic grinned at his friends. Tails was right, there was one thing that, above all others, made being here hundreds of times better than being inside giant magic gemstones or anywhere else.

He wasn't alone here.

* * *

The evening hours ticked by quietly and peacefully, with the topics of conversation going from one to another at random while the three friends slouched on the sofa. It was still relatively early in the evening when Tails fell asleep sitting, almost landing face first in the dishes on the low table in front of him if Sonic hadn't reacted quickly and caught him. Somehow, as he watched from his chair, Knuckles was sure this sort of thing had not happened the first time.

Sonic stood from his seat with Tails in his arms, the green eyes softly resting on the little fox. "I suppose he didn't get to sleep much with Metal Sonic around," he said quietly.

Knuckles nodded, also standing up. "Yeah. Poor kid." He walked out in front of Sonic without the hedgehog having to ask for it and held the doors open.

Sonic smiled a thanks to him as he carried Tails into his bedroom. The little fox didn't stir to being gently placed on the bed, nor to Sonic tucking his shoes off his feet and pulling the blankets over him. Before he left, Sonic stroked over Tails' bangs and flicked on a tiny lamp near the bedside that hardly gave out any light at all. Knuckles silently watched from the doorway. While it was always obvious that Sonic and Tails were close, it seemed strinkingly on display now, this family bond they shared.

Sonic looked up and caught Knuckles' gaze. "He gets scared of the dark sometimes," the blue hedgehog explained in a whisper, pointing at the lamp, utterly unaware that the lamp wasn't anywhere near the remarkable thing to see here.

Knuckles nodded back at the hedgehog anyway, then his gaze returned to the sleeping fox. "Sleep tight, Tails," he whispered and followed Sonic outside, switching off the lights to leave just the bedside lamp to softly send its warm glow through the dark room.

Sonic yawned even as he closed the door. "Mind you, little guy isn't the only one who really needs to hit the hay," he said in a normal level of voice again.

Knuckles nodded. "No, he's not," he admitted. "I can still feel trying to draw on those freaky fake Emeralds and..." He faltered again over a proper explanation.

Sonic held his head tilted to the side and one ear had flicked backwards as he studied Knuckles. "I know what you mean. That fake Chaos Emerald I had on the Ark and caused Chaos Control with kinda sucked energy outta me I didn't know belonged there." He underlined what he thought of that with a grimace.

Knuckles shrugged tiredly. "That's about it. A fake isn't as powerful. And no matter how much they looked like Master Emeralds, they weren't… stable. They weren't _mastering_ anything." The echidna shook his head. "Gah."

A grin flashed over Sonic's face. "Agreed." He chuckled as they strolled back into the living room. "Will you be good on the couch? After I kept you outta your bed on your island, maybe it'd be fair I lend you mine now…"

Knuckles responded with a shake of his head. "Nah, I'll be good on the couch." His eyes roamed the table with the messy remains of their dinner. "If someone removes this battlefield before."

Sonic laughed. "I'll be right at it, have to at least try to make a not totally bad host for once," he assured and began to gather the dishes. "You know," he said with a sideways glance at Knuckles, "you really scared me back there."

The echidna dropped into the couch heavily. "Trust me, I scared myself way too often this past week. Just… be so kind not to give me any heart attacks for a while, okay, Sonic?"

A pair of green eyes shot up from the table to fix on Knuckles. " _I_ don't give _you_ heart attacks for a while? _You_ totally gave _me_ one!"

"If I do that a few more hundred times, we'll maybe get even one day." Knuckles thought he managed to pull of the mock tone of voice, but he couldn't quite conceal the heaviness underneath it. Chaos, he was tired.

Sonic frowned at him. "I'm sorry," he apparently felt urged to say when the echidna remained silent.

Knuckles just shrugged at it. He wasn't interested in starting another argument right now. Now that he was dry, warm and fed, he found he lacked any and all motivation for any confrontation that wasn't absolutely necessary. "I suppose it's who you are and we'll have to put up with it."

Sonic grinned, making a pile of the plates. "Like with the fact Eggman's eggshaped and that there's too much H2O out there?", he joked.

Knuckles grinned back briefly. "Yeah, like that."

For a minute the guardian sat in silence, just watching Sonic placing the forks and spoons on top of the pile of plates and carrying everything outside, heading for the kitchen. A second trip had the pots travel the same way and the hedgehog returned to point out the battlefield had been cleaned up and offered to find Knuckles a proper blanket somewhere, but the echidna had something else on his mind.

"Sonic? Can I talk to you about something?"

The blue hedgehog blinked at the sudden air of seriousness again. "Yeah, sure? What's it? I promise I won't joke about it if it's about your weird shiny rock and that you had to break it. I told you I'm really thankful and stuff…"

"It's not about that." Knuckles shuffled a little on the couch. "I was just wondering… if you could tell me a few more things about what you saw when you were…. away? The last time you weren't exactly fit and happy to talk to me…"

Sonic grinned suddenly. "I shoulda known you wouldn't be happy until I'd described every parcel of ground I saw in there." He sat back down, and promptly elbowed him. "But fine. I kind of owe you. I'll make your story teller again. But just this once, okay? Then we're even?"

Knuckles nodded, trying to conceal how much that meant to him. He knew he would never ask again, and he thought Sonic knew that, too.

The two sat on the couch for another hour as Sonic retold everything he remembered, attempting to make sense of it as he went. The red echidna listened closely, trying his best to file it all to memory, trying to remember enough to check it against the old writings or to keep it in mind should anything of it ever come up again, even if he was at times struggling to keep his eyes open. He suspected that Sonic had him all figured out at the end there, because he came to a finish rather quickly and suddenly. By that point, even Knuckles couldn't bring himself to mind anymore, though.

After Sonic had finally gotten Knuckles a blanket to sleep under, they wished each other good night and Sonic departed to his bedroom, leaving Knuckles very tired but strangely content as well. He really hoped he could remember what Sonic told him until the morning...

The blanket Sonic had produced for him to use was bright blue and pretty soft and fluffy, but it wasn't before he'd turned off the lights and crawled under it, just to get poked by something spiky and pulled a single quill out of the blanket's fabric that he realized Sonic had given him his own blanket.

Knuckles shrugged and settled comfortably under it. Well, probably they really were even now.

_The End_


End file.
